How to better use your time with students.
Flipped learning refers to flipping what your students traditionally do in class with what they do outside of class. Students engage with course materials (i.e., readings, lecture videos) by themselves prior to class and then use class time to work on activities (e.g., homework, problem solving, group work). Outside of class students engage in lower order cognitive processes such as memorizing and understanding (see Bloom's Taxonomy) and inside the classroom they work on more difficult processes such as application (Brame, 2013.) Some in-class activities might consist of discussions or debates, problem-based learning, group work or peer instruction.
Moving from traditional classroom learning to flipped classroom learning involves a transition from faculty-centered to student-centered learning. Designing a flipped classroom, therefore, focuses on what your students will do in class, rather than what you will tell them.
Before Class | During Class | After Class | |
---|---|---|---|
Traditional | Students read materials. | Students listen to the lecture. | Students complete homework. |
Flipped | Students complete learning modules. | Students practice applying key concepts with feedback. | Students check understanding and extend learning to more complex tasks. |
Adapted from University at Austin, Faculty Innovation Center.
There are many strong arguments for why a flipped classroom is a better model for teaching over the traditional lecture-based model. Flipped classrooms allow for:
While these arguments might be compelling on their own, flipping a classroom and changing how one teaches can involve a lot of risk. There is, however, a large amount of research supporting the benefits for this shift in teaching.
Researchers have found that:
While there is no standard procedure for flipping a classroom, nor a setup that works for all classrooms, the following resources show you how you can flip your class, ways to assess a flipped class and examples of what others have done.