Thoughts on Touro's Flipped Classroom Model

[Drspongebob22]

Hello everyone,
As the title says, what do you think of Touro's flipped classroom approach? Do you think it's a good approach? Does it allow students to study other board prep materials during the second year? I like self-studying but a current Touro student mentioned that they have classes till afternoon and there are times that they have to watch 10-12 hours of videos for the next day. The individual was a first year student so they didn't know how that would affect their board preparation during the second year.

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[BobbyKoch]

I was a Masters student a few years ago, but the Masters program utilizes the same professors, curriculum and exams. With that caveat, I will say that I did not like it at the time (I haven’t heard that it has changed).

The videos they make for lectures are poorly produced. They use a green screen and “weatherman” sort of style with the prof standing in front of what are essentially PowerPoint slides. The sound in some videos is awful. The professors and staff expend a ton of effort on these vid lectures and so they are reluctant to change them much after they are finished. So any mistakes, inconsistencies, flaws, etc, get perpetuated for years. The vids we got were from 2-3 years prior. On top of all that, in-class clicker sessions are still mandatory. This makes for some long, exhausting days.

Now, after being at a school that does traditional lectures for my first year, I’m glad I made the choice to leave Touro. All of our lectures are recorded and high quality. Additionally, professors that want to incorporate flipped elements in their lectures are free to do so. You know what? When faculty are free to present in the way most comfortable for them, they do a great job. Our innovative professors who incorporate in-class clickers, small group discussion, etc, are fantastic! Even better is the fact that if they don’t go well or smoothly, I can watch from home and fast forward or skip to the good part.

This all being said, the faculty at Touro when I was there was really very good. Every one of them gave us tremendous support and hours of their time. So this is not a criticism of the faculty. Rather, I’m saying that they are a bit hamstrung by the admins insistence that all the lectures be produced in this somewhat antiquated and rigid way.

 

[Drspongebob22]

I was a Masters student a few years ago, but the Masters program utilizes the same professors, curriculum and exams. With that caveat, I will say that I did not like it at the time (I haven’t heard that it has changed).

The videos they make for lectures are poorly produced. They use a green screen and “weatherman” sort of style with the prof standing in front of what are essentially PowerPoint slides. The sound in some videos is awful. The professors and staff expend a ton of effort on these vid lectures and so they are reluctant to change them much after they are finished. So any mistakes, inconsistencies, flaws, etc, get perpetuated for years. The vids we got were from 2-3 years prior. On top of all that, in-class clicker sessions are still mandatory. This makes for some long, exhausting days.

Now, after being at a school that does traditional lectures for my first year, I’m glad I made the choice to leave Touro. All of our lectures are recorded and high quality. Additionally, professors that want to incorporate flipped elements in their lectures are free to do so. You know what? When faculty are free to present in the way most comfortable for them, they do a great job. Our innovative professors who incorporate in-class clickers, small group discussion, etc, are fantastic! Even better is the fact that if they don’t go well or smoothly, I can watch from home and fast forward or skip to the good part.

This all being said, the faculty at Touro when I was there was really very good. Every one of them gave us tremendous support and hours of their time. So this is not a criticism of the faculty. Rather, I’m saying that they are a bit hamstrung by the admins insistence that all the lectures be produced in this somewhat antiquated and rigid way.

This was really informative. Thank you so much!