Last year I unveiled the“QWIQR” Flipped Classroom Method on the Corwin Blog. I’ve been working on and tweaking this method for a couple of years using different delivery methods (edpuzzle and most recently YouTube Playlists) and adding Game Mechanics (most notably Narrative). The piece that always seemed to elude me was incorporating some sort of Social Fun Element. Flipping, especially outside of class, is a fairly Solo Mission format – screen, recording, headphones – but I made a breakthrough! 

Well, to be fair, I stumbled onto a simple but elegant solution. Alright, this isn’t Fleming accidentally discovering Penicillin, I know… But adding a multiplayer ability to QWIQR has been on my to do list for a year though. 

This year our 1-to-1 laptops were not being distributed until the 2nd day of school. No problem I thought, since I have a cart with two boxes of 10 iPads each. Since my max class was at 19 students I had more than enough… Except I forgot to plug in the bottom box… Ugh… As I quickly tried to monitor and adjust I saw a glorious sight

Yeah, ok… These are not my students… BUT I had a Eureka moment because I saw two girls shrug and just share their earbuds on one screen! No complicated app smashing or timing devices… Just share the headphones – or don’t even use headphones! Co-Op Mode!

If you are not familiar with QWIQR it is an Acronym and an Aspiration. I realized a few years ago that students were taking too long completing their flipped recording notes. One girl complained to me that it took her 2 hours to take notes on a 15 minute recording! I wanted to develop a quicker process that also had potential to improve the note taking process. The acronym stands for 

  • Q-uestion: I have split larger lectures into 1-2:30 minute chunks that are centered on a theme. Step one is to turn the title into a question.
  • W-atch: after turning the title in to a question, students put their pens down and just watch and listen to the recording. I have also removed all PowerPoint slides so students have to pay attention to what is being said.
  • I-dentify: write a quick summary of the main ideas and content discussed in the small segment. Ideally it will answer the question from the 1st “Q” step. This turns a lower level copying activity into a higher order evaluation activity.
  • Q-uestion again: after identifying main ideas students should jot down any questions they may still have. We can talk aboit the questions in class or I can write a note in their books.
  • R- ewatch: if necessary students can research the video, but only if absolutely necessary. The point is for students to quickly get the main ideas of the smaller thematic chunks.
  • (Thus process works really well when smashed with Cornell Notes)

Co-Op (cooperative) Mode is added in the Identify and Question Again sections. After watching together, the students sharing the ear buds pause the recording and quickly discuss and identify the main ideas before writing the notes down in their notebooks. 

Not only does this engage the Social (People) Fun but it adds another interaction with the content. I am so excited to Level Up the QWIQR model with Co-Op mode. Since that first class I have offered the Co-Op mode to the other 5 classes that I introduced QWIQR to and the response was overwhelmingly positive. I would be happy to talk more about the process with anyone interested.