I'm still flipping out with this metaphor. Partially its ironic because as a society we suffer from inversion. Even more than Plato's cave allegory, reality seems inverted in many ways. Flipping is a way of revealing this. I was thinking about this in terms of cheating on tests and how to detect it following up on an earlier entry on Stealth Assessment and Authentic Testing. In an unambiguous discipline where there is one right answer, perhaps it is easy to show you know the answer by cheating.
In terms of motivating a student to learn, it is giving responsibility and creating an environment that has real world implications to their actions. Their actions are a demonstration of their competency. It is impossible to cheat. Knowledge is agile, not simply a competency. It results in action. If you can authenticate that action there is no ambiguity.
As well as reversing the expectation of a test on a given date and time, a flipped assessment is stretched out, on going. The idea is assessment is more like a story revealing itself over time. The student is the author. A test can be too narrow, a missed opportunity to have us take ownership of our stories. The 'test' is not given by a teacher, but rather the role is to facilitate the student to self assess and create their stories. The process of life long learning is told in a collection of digital stories.
I flip the assessment in another way too; on myself, the assessor. I can see in the 'product' its quality and the growth that has occurred. I could do a better job. Its a situation of continuous improvement. As a teacher, a facilitator, I have so much to learn. I am my hardest critic, just like my students.
