Have you ever felt that students are not concentrated in your teaching? What are typical problems encountered during in-class sessions, if the traditional teaching approach is used? How much students concentrate in teaching and how much they seem to do something else? How to more engage and activate students during in-class session? Do you feel a sense of hurry in classroom? How to change classroom practice?
These were the main questions, espevially in the authors mind, when I decided to test flipped classroom. If you have not utilized flipped classroom approach yet, hopefully you’ll inspire to test it later on…
Traditional vrs. flipping
In a traditional classroom setting a teacher has a central role of giving instructions and leading the in-class session. Moreover the students are making homework at home. The central idea of flipped (or inverted) classroom is practically to flip this common practice. Therefore in a flipped classroom setting, students are typically learning the instructions at home by utilizing online resources such as e.g. educational videos or OER. Thus the things that are typically done during in-class sessions, are done at homework and vice versa. In flipped classroom method, during the classroom sessions are concentrated more on e.g. problem solving, making exercises or making other activities that engage students more on their learning process.
“A guiding principle of the flipped classroom is that work typically done as homework (e.g., problem solving, essay writing) is better undertaken in class with the guidance of the instructor. Listening to lecture or watching videos is better accomplished at home. Hence the term flipped or inverted classroom. (Herreid & Schiller, 2013)” .
Pedagogy?
The concept flipped classroom is quite flexible and there is not one way to flip a classroom. Where someone may assign a video watching for homework, someone else may allow to watch videos during classes. Despite the all positive hype related to the flipped classroom, it has not been spared for criticism. For example it has been stated that flipped classroom is a “high-tech version of an antiquated instructional method: the lecture (Ash 2012)”. Moreover, it has been doubted if the students are watching the assigned videos. (Ash 2012)
Overall it appears that flipped classroom approach is becoming to be more popular also in the field of higher education. Actually the flipped classroom belongs to “a part of a larger pedagogical movement that overlaps with blended learning, inquiry-based learning, and other instructional approaches and tools that are meant to be flexible, active, and more engaging for students. (Johnson et al. 2014)”. It’s not only the online videos that make the change. It’s more like how they are integrated in overall picture. (Tucker 2012)
Created by Knewton
Flipped classroom in practice
How to flip classes?
To flip a class, one needs an online learning materials and probably also some kind of learning management system. Fortunately a lot of video content and OERs are already freely available (e.g. Khan Academy). Worthwhile is to take a moment to check materials already produced and available of the topic concern. Moreover, it’s important to clear up, what kind of content should provide in a form of videos and which in other formats.
If one choose to make own videos, the video lectures need to plan carefully. The videos should plan to be short and compact (Kinnari-Korpela & Korpela 2014) in order to maintain attention of students. If possible, engage the students in the videos (Ash 2012).
After online learning resources have been selected, flipping the classroom is almost there. One still need to figure it out, how the classroom session will be organized, how the topics are dealt and what kind of exercises are handled during in-class session.
References:
Ash, K. (2012). Educators evaluate “flipped classrooms”. Education Week, 32(2), 6-8.
Fulton, K. (2012). Upside down and inside out: Flip Your Classroom to Improve Student Learning. Learning & Leading with Technology, 39(8), 12-17.
Gerstein, J. (2011). https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/the-flipped-classroom-model-a-full-picture/
Herreid, C. F., & Schiller, N. A. (2013). Case studies and the flipped classroom. Journal of College Science Teaching, 42(5), 62-66.
Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Estrada, V., Freeman, A. (2014). NMC Horizon Report: 2014 Higher Education Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.
Kinnari-Korpela, H., Korpela, A. (2014). Enhancing learning in engineering studies: experiences on short video lecturing. In Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications, 2014 (1), pp. 2207–2216. Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
Mok, H. N. (2014). Teaching tip: The flipped classroom. Journal of Information Systems Education, 25 (1), 7-11.
Tucker, B. (2012). The flipped classroom. Education Next, 12(1), 82-83.
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