What Exactly Is a Flipped Classroom?

What is involved, and how complicated is it? These are all questions you might be asking yourself, particularly if you are unfamiliar with the concept. Let’s take a deep dive into what flipped classrooms are all about.

In traditional classes, students learn and acquire content through in-class lectures and do the more difficult work of applying the content by themselves on homework assignments outside of class. Flipping a class reverses this, moving content acquisition or passive learning outside of class and moving the application of content into the classroom where students can benefit from the presence of the instructor and their fellow classmates as they learn. As such, a flipped classroom promotes the experiential learning approach because students are encouraged to learn by doing and thinking for themselves. In a presentation by Michael Sweet of Northeastern University, he explains that in-class application activities are at the heart of the flipped design. These are activities that are facilitated by the instructor — that students can work on together — because they’ve been held accountable to prepare for the task by engaging with out-of-class material ahead of time (Academic Innovations & eLearning, 2016, 31:00-32:00).

A central goal is to provide more time for interactions with students in class. Teachers can do this in various ways and with different degrees of adoption, ranging from just a few class sessions a year to a complete reconceptualization of a course (Bull, Ferster, & Kjellstrom, 2012).  For the faculty, this is a different skill set than lecturing. Facilitating a learning experience is not about being the lead role actor, it’s about being the director — which means you’re not in the spotlight, you’re off stage (for the most part). When working together, students can explain things to each other in ways that an instructor can never think of. Sometimes, a person who has just learned something is the very best teacher because they remember what it’s like to have the misconception of “yes, I was thinking of it like that too, but you can’t think about it like that; you have to think about it like this.” Collaboration is powerful for peer-powered learning (Academic Innovations & eLearning, 2016, 23:00-26:00).

Flipping the classroom is not about homework in the classroom and classwork at home. What it is really about is the lower-order thinking skills. These are the skills that students can do at home: they are the remembering and understanding aspects of learning that they are capable of doing on their own. Students can get that aspect of learning through video lessons, book lessons, or any combination thereof. The important part is that the instructor has some kind of assessment to find out how well the student learned that information. It is not just something that the instructor can find out about but something that gives students feedback so that they know how well they learned that information.

According to Dr Lauren Rosen, students advance to higher learning thinking skills when the instructor has time with them — these are the parts where students really need an instructor’s support. These are the parts that they struggle to do on their own. So, in the in-class or synchronous parts of learning, the instructor helps students by being a mentor and guide. Instructors help students to be creative in finding their own solutions to problems faced in the lessons. The idea of flipped lessons is really getting the students to work at their own pace and learn in the ways that make sense to them (Technology Innovation Center, 2020, 3:00-4:30).

The loud and grumpy students are going to say that they are teaching themselves. You’re going to hear, “I’m paying to teach myself. You’re not doing anything. I’m paying to hear from the expert and not my friends.” To dispel such misconceptions, there does need to be some explanation upfront about the rationale for utilizing this approach and about why it is better for learning. And what’s great is that there’s a lot of research on it. Students can work together because they’re being held accountable for doing their part of the project outside of the classroom environment. Not doing so would let the team down and may result in lower grades (Academic Innovations and eLearning, 2016, 26:00-27:00).

Lage, Platt, and Treglia, in their exploration of the “flipped classroom,” found that students generally preferred the inverted classroom to a traditional lecture (Lage, Platt, & Treglia, 2001). The new breed of students in higher education has access to technology at all times and expects to have access to content when and where they want it. The idea that lecture content can be accessed on their own time outside of the classroom and that face-to-face time is used for further exploration appeals to those entering higher education today. Daphne Koller of Stanford “…found that classroom attendance doubled when she used class time for group problem-solving sessions instead of lectures” (Bull, Ferster, & Kjellstrom, 2012).

One thing about flipping anything is that you have to be able to know what you want your students to be able to do since it’s an application; you want the students to apply the material; therefore, you have to know what it looks like when students are applying the material (Academic Innovations & eLearning, 2016, 49:00-50:00).

The value of a flipped class, then, is the repurposing of class time into a workshop where students can inquire about lecture content, test their skills in applying knowledge, and interact with one another in hands-on activities (Academic Innovations & eLearning, 2016, 22:00-23:00).

A course should be “flipped” when the course lends itself to a delivery where hands-on activities, discussion, and case studies can occur in the classroom and build upon the basic content that students can learn independently. Not all educators and courses are ready to make the transition to a “flipped” model. Indeed, a “flipped” classroom model requires buy-in from the instructor as well as the students, which can be a tricky thing to negotiate. (Bane, n.d.)

Benefits of a Flipped Classroom

For years, it was normal and accepted for students to come into the classroom and receive content instruction from the instructor. Students would then take this knowledge and apply the principles on their own time through homework. These general principles of instruction have been challenged with the advent of the digital age and access to content anywhere and at any time. The “Flipped Classroom” is a perfect example of this change.

Furthermore, the role of the teacher is changing. Reigeluth points out that “The teacher’s role has changed dramatically in the new paradigm of instruction from the ‘sage on the stage’ to the ‘guide on the side’” (Reigeluth, 2012). The idea of “sage on the stage” speaks to the old standard in education. The “sage” or instructor would literally be on stage at the front of the classroom and distribute content to students. The change, however, does not stop with the instructor; the student’s role has changed as well. Reigeluth goes on to say that “…learning is an active process. The student must exert effort to learn. The teacher cannot do it for the student” (Reigeluth, 2012). In modern-day education, the student is expected to take more responsibility in their learning, and the instructor is expected to help facilitate this learning. This change has resulted in instructors questioning their instructional methods. (Reigeluth, 2012).

How do your students benefit from the flipped classroom model? Baker and Mitchell have made many important observations about how the flipped classroom benefits the students. First, they noted, “students produce a more polished performance — they work on Um-ing and Ah-ing and forgetting where they were in what they were saying. In other words, distractions are at a minimum.” They go on to say, “When they are actually doing group work, they’re interested, they’re sitting forward and talking to one another, and they get up to do presentations — and it does force them to get out of their comfort zone of sitting there as a student just sitting and listening to a lecture. They have to actually participate, so they’re getting more out of it.” (Macquarie University, 2013).

Challenges of a Flipped Classroom

While there are many benefits of a flipped classroom, there are a few possible drawbacks or challenges that should be mentioned. They include the following:

• Your students may find it challenging to navigate and manage all the different personalities, relationships, and skill levels of the individuals on their team. This could result in competition and/or conflict.
• Students may find that the decision-making process is slowed down, as is the implementation process of what the team is planning to accomplish.
• Teams may discover that they are at a stalemate and not able to come to any decision at all, which leads to inefficiencies.

Finally, due to any or all of the above, students may find that there is the possibility of a lack of follow-through, which is seen as procrastination.

Attributions

The section titled “What Exactly is a Flipped Classroom?” is adapted from the following sources:

The Flipped Classroom: Successful Practices and Common Pitfalls. [Video] by Academic Innovations & eLearning, University of Alaska Anchorage. Available on YouTube. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 Deed | Attribution 3.0 Unported | Creative Commons.

Building Flipped Lessons. [Video] by Technology Innovation Center, University of Hawaii. Available on YouTube. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 Deed | Attribution 3.0 Unported | Creative Commons.