By Cassandra Hendry, TLS staff writer
For Shannon Butler, a professor with Carleton’s Sprott School of Business, teaching at a new university meant a big change. And it truly was a change: Butler went from teaching upper-year classes of 45 students to first-year courses with more than 100 students each.
“There are definitely challenges in the classroom to engage students in a bigger class,” says Butler, who began teaching at Carleton last fall.
First-year students are experiencing a shift in their lives when they first come to university, Butler explains, and they need an adjustment period of encouragement to complete their work and stay on task.
“But I love teaching first year because there’s more I can do with the material. The material isn’t as technical as third year and there’s more flexibility with how you can present it and what you can do with it,” she says.
One of those creative ways of disseminating the material included Butler’s foray into the flipped classroom model. While that was her previous style of teaching during her years at Western University, it was the first time both her introduction to accounting courses at Carleton have been taught that way.
Her flipped classroom meant providing students with videos ahead of class to review, with the goal of them coming to class ready to work through problems rather than receiving a standard lecture.
“I find that makes better use of your time with the students to work hands-on with them. That way, they can watch the videos whenever and how many times they want,” Butler says.
With accounting courses being so problem heavy, Butler knew a flipped classroom model would be a good fit. Students could stay at their desks to work, while Butler would circulate to provide any help and take issues up as a group if necessary.
While most of the fall course was smooth sailing, Butler says there were challenges trying to get first-year students to use this model. To fix this, she started off class with a small review of the videos the students were tasked with watching before jumping into the work.
She also made good use of a document camera app on her phone that she could take around the classroom to work on problems with students, all the while broadcasting it live onto a screen. In the winter semester, she also used an iPad Pro with a stylus to project the written problems she was taking up.
As a newcomer to Ottawa like many of her younger students, Butler found the flipped classroom helped both her students and herself.
“For first-years, it’s a good way to get to know [professors]. I like to try to let my students know that I’m a person and approachable. [The flipped classroom] helps with that.”
Earlier this year, Butler was honoured with a 2016 Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award, which celebrates instructors who have used technology in the classroom in unique and innovative ways. Her experience with flipped classrooms, as well as her interactive, technology-driven class set-up, helped her secure the award.
Not one to rest on her laurels, Butler is trying something new with her students this semester: a live, electronic landing page where Butler and her students can contribute simultaneously. The technology, Padlet, is similar to a Google Doc, where anyone with the correct link can access the live document and write text or attach photos instantly.
With the school year just beginning, Butler hasn’t been able to explore this technology thoroughly with her classes yet, but she says her initial forays have been successful. And she knows that with each semester she’ll use her experiences to learn constantly.
“I always like to do things differently. Always.”