Tee Minus 35 and Counting...

Greetings! This blog is aimed to all who want to read about the development of an active learning, or "flipped"--classroom in an introductory Physical Geography class.

I'm going live with 104 students in just under 35 minutes. 

I have spent all summer prepping for this class. Know what I learned? No matter how many videos you make (I made 16), no matter how many activities you redesign, no matter how much you pore over your calendar, you CANNOT get an active learning class ready by Day 1.

Well, I can't.

There's so much to do! It was a blast rethinking this course. And it came just in time, too. I was recently tenured, and as we know, not reforming your teaching and just lecturing is a safe road to tenure (Feig, 2013--gratuitous self-citation! In a blog! Yay!) Now I'm ready to cause trouble.

The active learning classrooms CMU designed are freakin' amazing. They work beautifully, they are a joy to look at, and the student space is big with the teacher space being small. Beauty.

Later on I'll post excerpts from my syllabus, some of the videos I made, and reflections from Day 1. Since this is a TR afternoon class, it has about half upperclassmen, even though it's a 100-level.

Off we go!

-af