Flipped Classrooms
Flipped Classrooms
A flipped classroom is one in which instructors provide lectures and other forms of direct instruction in advance of class meetings, thereby allowing classroom time to be devoted to discussion, intensive analysis, problem solving, and other forms of active learning. In other words, rather than requiring students to assimilate information encountered for the first time in the classroom and apply it later, students come to class having already received direct instruction (via instructor-provided videos, audio recordings, slideshows, or other forms of media) and work together in the classroom to explore, apply, test, or expand that material. In many disciplines, notably in the humanities and social sciences, this has long been a common pedagogical approach, even if it has not been referred to in exactly this way.
How do I flip my classroom?
Decide whether the flipped model will work well for your course and whether it will be particularly effective for specific class sessions. For example, if you plan to have a class session with a complex, time-intensive activity that requires students to apply specific knowledge and skills from the course, then you may consider using a flipped classroom model for that meeting. Or, instructors who are seeking to create a highly collaborative course that allows them to understand how their students learn, as well as allows students to connect to one another through active learning, might consider flipping their course.
Flipping your classroom
As discussed above, in a flipped classroom, the instructional component of the course happens before class meetings and class sessions are devoted to applied learning—a reversal (or flipping) of the traditional model of pedagogy. The most important first step in weighing whether to flip your class is to determine how exactly you will use the time you share with students. Flipped classrooms require a significant amount of preparatory work from students and they may disengage from that work if the now open meeting time does not advance their learning. Spend time identifying specific active learning strategies that will constructively challenge their understanding of essential course concepts or prepare them to complete assignments.
After you have determined the types of activities that students will do during class time, locate or produce the instructional materials that they will engage with prior to meetings. These could include videos, podcasts, mini-lectures, or demonstrations that you have located or created yourself and that provide essential instruction that they will build on during the course meeting time. If you are creating your own media, you may consider collecting student feedback on your work at strategic points throughout the semester.
One of the challenges of a flipped classroom model is that students lose the opportunity to ask clarifying questions about your lessons in the moment. You may consider incorporating an asynchronous way for students to get answers to their questions about course materials, such as a course message board or a chat application (like Slack) that you and/or a teaching assistant monitors during particular times. More generally, however, it is wise to dedicate some time in an early class to demonstrating where students can access the instructional materials, how they should approach them, and where they raise questions about them. Instructors occasionally assume that students are more technologically savvy than they are themselves, but this is not always the case. Providing all students with guidance on how to access and engage with the instructional materials can work around this challenge without singling out specific students.
Quizzes, check-ins and brief writing assignments can help you assess student learning and clarify where adjustments in content and approach are needed. Creating pre-class assignments and holding students accountable for them by incorporating them in peer assessment activities can also be a generative way to nourish students’ active engagement in the material while also assessing their progress in analyzing key information and concepts. Instructors across the science disciplines have also experimented with a range of in-class assessments that groups of students might collaborate on as part of team-based learning.
Brame, Cynthia J. (Vanderbilt University): Flipping the Classroom
Center for Teaching and Learning (University of Texas at Austin): How Do You Flip a Class?