Flipped Learning

Help­ing Stu­dents Learn More Effec­tive­ly By Using Class Time for Dis­cus­sion and Prob­lem-Solv­ing

In the flipped class­room mod­el, stu­dents engage with course con­tent before class so instruc­tors can fos­ter more active learn­ing dur­ing class­room time. (UBC — Flipped Class­room)

Overview of Flipped Learning

Flipped learn­ing “flips” the tra­di­tion­al mod­el of edu­ca­tion that most fac­ul­ty have deliv­ered or expe­ri­enced. In tra­di­tion­al edu­ca­tion, class­room time is spent deliv­er­ing basic intro­duc­to­ry con­cepts, and then task­ing stu­dents with assign­ments that require a deep­er lev­el of under­stand­ing. Since the assign­ments are to be com­plet­ed out­side of class, the expe­ri­ence can be frus­trat­ing and iso­lat­ing.

Flipped learn­ing revers­es the tasks com­plet­ed both in and out of class­room time. Out­side of class stu­dents learn the basic intro­duc­to­ry con­cepts of a top­ic. Class­room time is then spent in the explo­ration of the top­ic or con­cept by cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to dis­cuss and work with prob­lems that devel­op deep­er under­stand­ing and con­nec­tions.

Anoth­er way to con­sid­er this class­room deliv­ery method is to spend time in class on the hard stuff, then send them out to work on rel­a­tive­ly low-lev­el con­cepts on their own. As a stu­dent, which area would you ben­e­fit from the instruc­tors pres­ence and time? The easy stuff, or the hard stuff? To be clear, flipped learn­ing is a design rather than its own dis­tinct instruc­tion­al method. What mat­ters most is how the class time itself is pur­posed.

Video: Intro­duc­tion to Flipped Learn­ing

Video: What is Flipped Learn­ing?

Some­times we can con­sid­er edu­ca­tion as through the lens of effi­cien­cy and time well spent. If our course or class involves sub­stan­tial “data”, per­haps it does not mat­ter who deliv­ers this con­tent to them. Stu­dents can often learn many aspects of a basic intro­duc­to­ry nature suc­cess­ful­ly from text­books or videos. The preva­lence and growth of YouTube should be ample evi­dence of this.

In addi­tion, stu­dents are pro­vid­ed with the oppor­tu­ni­ties to stretch their under­stand­ing and dig deep­er into chal­leng­ing con­cepts when with their peers and the gen­tle guid­ance of their instruc­tor. Aca­d­e­m­ic research has demon­strat­ed a strong cor­re­la­tion between active engage­ment (dis­cus­sion, time spent on prob­lems) to deep­er under­stand­ing of sub­ject mat­ter. The chal­leng­ing home­work prob­lems then become grounds for vibrant dis­cus­sion and debate, assis­tance and coach­ing from peers nat­u­ral­ly devel­op as stu­dents work through the tasks that orig­i­nal­ly would have been an exer­cise of soli­tude at home.

Video: Sim­pli­fy­ing Flipped Learn­ing

Since flipped learn­ing is not its own ped­a­gog­i­cal instruc­tion­al method, the com­po­nents are cen­tered more around its deploy­ment:

1. Decide how you will use class­room time: Flipped learn­ing is designed to use class­room time for active and engag­ing projects, prob­lems, dis­cus­sions and stud­ies. Some­times it can be help­ful to con­sid­er what home­work assign­ments have been used in the past, and how these could be re-pur­posed for in-class use. Remem­ber, the entire course is not required to be flipped, per­haps only once every week may be facil­i­tat­ed in this man­ner. Exam­ples include:

  • Dis­cus­sions
  • Chal­leng­ing prob­lems
  • Group activ­i­ties
  • Projects (con­tin­u­al or one-off)
  • Field trips
  • Guest speak­ers
  • Case study
  • Game cre­ation
  • Inter­net sourc­ing images
  • Flash card cre­ation, then shar­ing
  • Mul­ti­ple choice ques­tion cre­ation, then shar­ing
  • Role play­ing
  • Debate
  • Demon­stra­tion

2. Iden­ti­fy resources for class­room time: Flipped learn­ing may need some of the above-men­tioned activ­i­ties cre­at­ed if they have not been used in the course before. If an instruc­tor is used to deliv­er­ing con­tent via lec­ture, this will be a tran­si­tion as lec­ture typ­i­cal­ly requires lit­tle in the form of stu­dent direc­tion, hand­outs or instruc­tions. Instruc­tors may also want to con­sid­er the time each of the activ­i­ties may take. Final­ly, con­sid­er how these class­room activ­i­ties will relate and build on the out of class learn­ing stu­dents will do. Just as home­work need­ed to relate to what was learned in class, the in-class activ­i­ties now need to relate to the out-of-class activ­i­ties.

3. Iden­ti­fy resources for out­side class­room time: Flipped learn­ing typ­i­cal­ly requires most of the time spent here. This is because most of the intro­duc­to­ry con­cepts have been the back­bone of the lec­ture deliv­ery. If ade­quate learn­ing resources are not avail­able, there may need to be some devel­op­ment. Not a video expert? Not a prob­lem, CTLI can assist in nav­i­gat­ing video cap­tur­ing soft­ware and point­ers for what works best. You DO NOT need to be a tech­nol­o­gy wiz­ard to pro­vide unique videos for your course. Con­sid­er the depth of con­tent that is planned for stu­dents to tack­le on their own. Remem­ber, the pur­pose of flipped learn­ing is to have stu­dents work on less-chal­leng­ing top­ics out­side of class, so tem­per your expec­ta­tions.

Here are some ways stu­dents can engage with con­tent at home, out­side of the class­room:

  • YouTube videos
  • Text­book read­ings
  • Instruc­tor cre­at­ed video lec­ture
  • Instruc­tor cre­at­ed Pow­er­Point video
  • Instruc­tor cre­at­ed POV video
  • Oth­er web­site arti­cles, blogs, etc.

4. Explain flipped learn­ing to class: Flipped learn­ing is dif­fer­ent from the norm in most post-sec­ondary insti­tu­tions. Pri­or to estab­lish­ing any flipped learn­ing in your class, it is impor­tant to artic­u­late the process and expec­ta­tions for this dif­fer­ent approach. An instruc­tor can be met with a quick back­lash if no expla­na­tion is pro­vid­ed before flip­ping a class. Remem­ber, stu­dents are used to not doing home­work if it can be accom­plished in class. If they think the home­work is unnec­es­sary or “option­al” there will be a class­room full of stu­dents who are unpre­pared to engage in deep­er learn­ing activ­i­ties.

Encour­age stu­dents that they will not be left to “learn the course on their own”, estab­lish that flex­i­bil­i­ty will be avail­able to clar­i­fy con­cepts from the pre­vi­ous night’s learn­ing (mini-lec­tures, Q&A), affirm that this may not be every student’s first choice of class design. In the same breath, it may also ben­e­fit the class to hear that tra­di­tion­al lec­ture for­mat is rarely pre­ferred by most stu­dents in a class. Noth­ing is per­fect; how­ev­er, a flipped class­room design can help to pro­vide vari­a­tion in the course deliv­ery modal­i­ty.

Considerations

Unpre­pared stu­dents. The under­stand­ing is that resources will be avail­able for stu­dents to engage with that are rel­e­vant and deep enough to allow them to par­tic­i­pate in activ­i­ties when in class. Like­ly there will be some stu­dents who choose not be come pre­pared to class. In these sit­u­a­tions, it is impor­tant not to capit­u­late and run an entire lecture/presentation for those who have cho­sen not to do their pre-class learn­ing. This prac­tice leads to an ero­sion of sup­port by stu­dents who came pre­pared and fur­ther low­ers the moti­va­tion of those who were unpre­pared as “the instruc­tor will sim­ply cov­er it any­ways in class”. Run activ­i­ties as planned and let stu­dents who are unpre­pared floun­der. Next class, they will like­ly come pre­pared.

Time is required to devel­op plans, resources, and activ­i­ties. Time and effort is required to rethink and pre­pare both pre-class and in-class activ­i­ties. How­ev­er, most (if not all) resources devel­oped can be reused for sub­se­quent class­es. Just like craft­ing the per­fect slide show, dis­cus­sion, prob­lem or lec­ture, time is required. Fac­ul­ty should real­ize that this time is an invest­ment for future offer­ings of the course and will pay­off.

Eval­u­ate class­room activ­i­ties for group size. The activ­i­ties that can be facil­i­tat­ed in a large class are few­er than those in a small class. There will need to be logis­ti­cal con­sid­er­a­tions for the room, fur­ni­ture, and num­ber of stu­dents. Don’t be afraid to think out­side the box, as this is the place to engage in active learn­ing prac­tices

Stu­dent resis­tance. Being pas­sive in a lec­ture is often far eas­i­er and less intim­i­dat­ing than being active­ly involved in a class. Although it is eas­i­er, research shows that active engage­ment typ­i­cal­ly results in bet­ter learn­ing and a more pos­i­tive class­room expe­ri­ence for stu­dents. Encour­age stu­dents to be open-mind­ed about this dif­fer­ent approach.

The fol­low­ing video is a great exam­ple of the flipped learn­ing mod­el in action for a Uni­ver­si­ty of Emory Biol­o­gy class. Pro­fes­sor Alex Esco­bar uti­lizes the flipped class­room con­cept to encour­age active engage­ment of his stu­dents in col­lab­o­ra­tive tasks. Notice the size of the class. Although large and using stan­dard the­atre style seat­ing, he is able to get stu­dents active­ly engaged with con­tent that they have viewed the night /week pri­or.

Although this instruc­tor had a pro­fes­sion­al record­ing stu­dio at his dis­pos­al, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that there are now many types of video-cap­ture sys­tems that can be used. CTLI can assist in this process and help you cre­ate cap­ti­vat­ing, orig­i­nal, clear videos for your stu­dents to engage with out­side of class. One of the ben­e­fits of deliv­er­ing con­tent through video is stu­dents can pause & rewind when some­thing does not makes sense. A ben­e­fit for instruc­tors is that your video will cov­er exact­ly what you want­ed, no more “opps, I for­got to say that today…” moments.

Video: Biol­o­gy Pro­fes­sor uses Flipped Class­room Method

Video: Flipped Learn­ing in Action with Peter Sankoff

To start this type of teach­ing method con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to a mod­er­ate adop­tion mod­el. Start by eval­u­at­ing a sin­gle class that the flipped class­room may work well. Although some large insti­tu­tions may have stu­dio space to cre­ate video lec­tures, this is not a require­ment. Often the devel­op­ment of slide deck videos with voiced nar­ra­tion is more ben­e­fi­cial for stu­dents when com­pared to a video of a per­son talk­ing at the front of the class. Con­tact CTLI for rec­om­men­da­tions and assis­tance in the cre­ation of, stor­ing upload­ing, and deploy­ment of these resources. Now might be a good time to dis­cuss what activ­i­ties could be used in the class­room.

  • Course Design: Plan­ning a Flipped Class (Uni­ver­si­ty of Water­loo) — Web­page
  • In-Class and Assess­ment for a Flipped Class­room (Uni­ver­si­ty of Water­loo) — Web­page

Video: Design­ing a Flipped Class Les­son

Helpful Resources

  • Flip­ping the Class­room (Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty) — Web­page
  • Flipped Learn­ing: No You Don’t Need to Use Video in Flipped Learn­ing (and 5 Alter­na­tives by Robert Tal­bert) — Post
  • Flipped Class­rooms (Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty) — Web­page
  • Flip­ping the Class­room (Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty) — Web­page
  • 7 Things You Should Know about Flipped Class­rooms (Edu­cause) — PDF