Self-Paced Learning

In talking with a colleague and discussing Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams' book Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day, we began toying with the idea of "self-paced learning." At this point, this is an ethereal vision of how a chemistry classroom could work. Different groups of students could work their way through the curriculum at their own pace, taking tests and doing labs when they are ready for them.

Prerequisites

There are a couple of key structural things that we thought had to be in place for this to happen. 

1. Standards: In order to manage multiple students in multiple places at once, you have to have a consistent way to measure how well they're doing. How is a kid to know if he is ready for a test? How are you going to grade the first and last groups' tests consistently if they are taken 2 weeks apart? Standards and learning objectives must be written and inextricably linked to the curriculum for students to know how they are doing on a given concept, where they need to improve, and for them to be graded fairly.
2. Videos: Videos are the backbone to a flipped classroom. There's no way you can manage giving 5 different 10-minute lectures to 5 different groups of students in a single class period. You can, however, if there are videos of those 5 different lessons. Although we are not quite there, the Chemistry Team at Wheaton North has most of our key concept lectures and notes on video.

Complications

Of course, there's a downside. I'm sure there are creative ways to involve the entire class all at once when they are working on 5 different units, but I haven't thought of any. I like doing a warm-up activity at the beginning of class, allowing it to lead into a full class discussion or error analysis. This opportunity would be lost if some students are doing different warm-up activities. I suppose I would just have to do that error analysis with different groups. One that I have thought of is having student groups teach the topic they are on to other student groups, whether or not they have already covered it. All teachers know that you learn more when you teach.

This is just an initial idea at this point, but I could easily see where it would be a natural byproduct of implementing SBG. Can you imagine students coming into the science classroom, looking up the next lab in the curriculum, gathering their materials from cabinets (peacefully!), and getting to work in the lab on their own initiative, before the initial bell rings? Now that would be #instaworthy.