Situation Room

Photo: Dr. Strangelove

The flipped classroom offers an opportunity to take advantage of group intelligence and apply it to real problems.  To be successful, it benefits from a situation room.  That room would immerse participants in relevant data, offer them tools to explore solutions and ramifications, and facilitate group activity.  The institutional classroom in the hands of a very enterprising teacher might look a little like this, but the key to a situation room is the way it brings information together from vast and diverse perspectives: it is a cross-pollinating, collaborative environment that transgresses departmental boundaries.  A situation room will tackle problems both immediate and historic: climate change, slavery, capitalism, border security, poverty.  It may devote itself to one topic for a week or a semester or a year.  Its goal is problem definition, research, analysis, brainstorming, proposed action, and possible results.