In 2012, I believe. And I didn't dabble—I jumped right in! I used videos I’d recorded during previous versions of the class. Those videos are still online, and people still watch them. I believe there are 28 altogether, with close to 300,000 views.

Well, I was in the process of being evaluated for tenure-track, and was looking at ways to improve my teaching. One of the things that had come up in my conversations with a senior faculty member was the need to make classes more interactive. So I was researching new ideas and read a few articles about flipped classrooms. Of course, now everyone talks about them, but this was 2011—there was not yet much out there.

I know about the concerns that other faculty had, but I didn’t really have them. I had no concerns about using technology because I’d been testing different technologies for a long time already. I had recorded my lectures basically since I began teaching, posting them on iTunes at first, then on YouTube. And I was using Piazza—I was one of the early adopters—so I just started using it to post instructions for the activities I planned for classroom meetings. That way, when I came into class, students could just pop open their computers and start working. I’d give a brief overview and then go around and help them.

Well, student pushback was not really something I thought about ahead of time—you just jump in naively and hopefully, and only later realize you’re going against a whole culture! Students do push back sometimes. When you make them work in class instead of standing at the front and lecturing to them, you’ll occasionally get reactions like, Why isn’t the teacher teaching me? You just have to be able to explain why you think this way is going to be more effective and useful to them. You have to wage a PR campaign to get them on board. Because if they’re not on board, nothing works, really.

I haven’t carried out any formal evaluation. But I can tell you that in a smaller class, I get the opportunity to talk to almost every student in every class. I literally interview them face-to-face and can tell if they’re understanding or not understanding, if they are behind or are getting ahead. Week after week, I talk to them and see progress.

I use a Mac, and a Wacom tablet for graphical input into the Mac. I use screen capture software; my favorite app is IShowU. I sometimes prepare Keynote presentations. I use QuickTime 7 to crop and edit video. I do want to make the point, though, that flipping your classroom does not require video. Since I started teaching this way, I’ve also used other forms of content delivery. I'm currently using iPython notebooks to deliver content together with code, since I teach computation classes.

One of the things that’s been helpful is that whenever I make suggestions, you guys follow through on them. That’s what I’ve told other professors. I’ll say, ‘If there’s something you don’t like, tell them.’ Some of the changes—you can now post JPEGs, for example—have made things even easier, especially for organic chemistry, where I’m drawing structures and things. Even my students now post images that they drew and photographed with their phones!

It’s the center for communicating with my students at GW, for keeping everybody up to date and answering questions. Previously, before I ever flipped a class, I did the following, which was new at the time: I basically advertised my Piazza class outside of the registered students. I put a couple of announcements on relevant LinkedIn groups and opened up the class to any interested self-learner, from anywhere. So we had about 180 observers who joined our Piazza class, along with my registered students.

One of the things that’s been helpful is that whenever I make suggestions, you guys follow through on them. That’s what I’ve told other professors. I’ll say, ‘If there’s something you don’t like, tell them.’ Some of the changes—you can now post JPEGs, for example—have made things even easier, especially for organic chemistry, where I’m drawing structures and things. Even my students now post images that they drew and photographed with their phones!

I was at Boston University at the time.

I post updates and feedback, debriefs for the students. They post questions and I post answers; we go back and forth. It’s a conversation where things are recorded and remain in one place. I’ll also post an interesting article or something I want them to read. And then post instructions for class activities before each class.

The institutional LMS is Blackboard, and I find the interface to be last-century—so awkward and clunky. Platforms have evolved to have a different aesthetic; expectations are higher now. Blackboard feels like it’s 1998 or something. So I use Piazza for the user interface and the ease-of-use. I just have a window open all the time; it doesn’t log me out, and changes appear instantly. It’s the type of user interface that people expect nowadays, but it’s also simple. Some things in the 21st century are over-engineered, and that just makes me mad. I don’t want a platform that makes me mad. I want my technology to be streamlined and not in the way.

It’s often said that professors have to do some sort of jump to start using online as part of teaching, as if it were a big stretch or something. When the reality is that even if you’re not doing anything online, students are learning online. As an instructor, if you don't embrace the technologies that students want to use, they're just going to go around you and blend your class anyway. I believe that fear of technology is a losing battle. Students will use their phones or laptops in your classroom regardless; why not co-opt those devices for learning activities so that they are busy using them to answer questions? I mean, I keep my students busy—and I just assume they’re going to have their laptops and phones open all the time. I find it's much better to direct those technologies towards meaningful learning.