How do you get your students to watch the videos?

I got an email from another teacher who is flipping and they asked the question "How do you get your students to watch the videos?" How you answer this question as a flipped learning teacher is very important. In my opinion, here are a few options:

1. Make them by not allowing them to move on until they do it.

This is taking the approach of a Flipped Mastery model where students can't move on until they have watched the video. The teacher in us assumes that students can learn unless they are first exposed to content. So this is the approach that I used during my first year of flipping. I have since found that students learn more from doing problems than from watching a video. I don't think that students have to watch a video before being ready to do problems on a new topic, but this is a better sequence for most students.

The main problem with this problem is that students will struggle on harder sections, especially weaker students. The first year that I flipped I found that my lower achieving students were the ones who were always falling behind. These were also the same students who were not motivated to do more work to catch up. There are lots of teachers who have found ways to make Flipped Mastery work, but it doesn't work with my teaching style because I couldn't give my lower achieving students the support that they needed.

2. Don't require them to watch the video

Simply giving them points or not giving them points won't be enough motivation for most students to watch the video. If you offer points for doing it late, then students will put it off until just before the test or quiz and then the opportunity for depth of understanding is lost. Or if you don't accept it late, then students who didn't do it have no reason to go back. This is a recipe for failure.

3. Find a "happy medium"

I think this is where most flipped teachers settle, is some combination of the first two elements. These aren't discrete suggestions, it is a continuum and different teachers and groups of students will need to find a different "happy medium."

The "happy medium" that I use is: all of my students watch the same video on the same night and come to class ready to do textbook problems as a class, usually on individual whiteboards. If a student shows up to class without having watched the video, I don't send them to the back of the class to watch the video, even though many Flipped teachers do this. They have the choice of going to a computer, taking notes and then completing some textbook problems later or they can participate with the class in doing problems together and watch the video later on their own time. Most students choose to participate with the class because they learn more with the class than they do from doing textbook problems alone. There is a penalty though, the students do take a 3 question, open notes, quiz about the assigned video. Students may not retake these daily quizzes and they are worth, in total, about 10% of their overall grade. Not a lot, but enough to show them that I am serious about them coming to class prepared.

I am sure that there are other "happy mediums" that you can find, but this is the one that has been working very well for me. As I have said before: the first year of flipping is very hard, but the second year of flipping is worth it. It will take you about one year to work out the system, but after that it is awesome! I will never go back.

Disclaimer

I would like to point out that am assuming that the videos are accessible to students. With my current students I have never had a problem with students getting access to the videos. I teach at a one-to-one laptop school and all of my students have internet at home and most of them have personal internet devices. I also post my videos in multiple locations just in case one source has problems. So my main focus has been on motivation.