“Flipped learning” has become a hot catchphrase in education circles as of late, with many faculty members feeling the pressure to flip their courses to escape the drawbacks of the traditional “stand and deliver” model of teaching. The flipped learning model takes the traditional in-class lecture and puts it online as a pre-class activity, thus leaving the face-to-face class available for interactivity, such as answering questions. Yet many faculty and students report dissatisfaction with flipped classes, which has led people to question the whole premise of flipped teaching.
But, as I have previously discussed in Online Classroom, objections to flipped learning are often really objections to the way in which it has been implemented (November 2016). In particular, faculty members who flip courses often do not put much care into designing quality online content. They just post transcripts of lectures rather than create an introductory video that motivates and directs the learning by explaining what the student should get out of the course resources and why. Faculty also often lack a clear understanding of how to use in-class time to build on the understanding that is gotten from the online content.
Robert Talbert, a mathematics instructor at Grand Valley State University, adds two more interesting flipped learning mistakes from his own experience that serve as helpful guides for faculty members looking to effectively flip their courses.
Outside Work
Talbert points out that the traditional view of flipped learning is that the online activities, the “lectures,” are for mastering content (Talbert 2017), but he suggests that they are really for generating questions. Mastering content is part of the purpose of pre-class activity, but it should not be the only purpose.
Talbert is questioning those who are merely moving their face-to-face lecture online. They deliver content in some form, be it text, video, or outside resources, but do not invite student engagement. They are still using the “push” model of learning, where information is pitched by the instructor and caught by the students, rather than one of engagement.
Talbert notes that, once the content is online and thus broken from the constraints of time and location, it can be used to “launch” in-class learning by requiring the students to engage it in a way that generates questions to bring to class. For instance, students go through a module that teaches Eulerian paths and then runs some examples on a computer program. This yields a counterintuitive result, which the students are required to explain.
The exercise is meant to generate student questions that they cannot answer at the time and so need to bring to class. Thus, the pre-class activity is connected to the in-class portion, and the two reinforce one another. This addresses the common issue in flipped learning that the in-class content seems unconnected to the out-of-class content or, conversely, is just a rehash of the out-of-class content.
In-class time
Instructors often assume they need to start classes with an entrance quiz to ensure that the students do the out-of-class work. This is not an issue unique to flipped learning since face-to-face courses also assign out-of-class readings and the like. But instructors teaching flipped courses seem to feel especially pressured to ensure out-of-class work perhaps because they don’t actually see the students attending the lectures. The way they normally do so is with a quiz at the beginning of class.
But Talbert notes that these quizzes only induce anxiety and might subconsciously cause students to shut down afterward. He suggests replacing these graded quizzes with “guided practice.” The difference is that guided practice uses questions that students solve in class without being graded. These questions can be given to students at the beginning of class, like a quiz, or before class. But the students work on that question in class, and at the end the instructor goes through the answer. In that way, students do not worry about a poor grade; they are more focused on learning what they did wrong if they did not get the question right. Instead of only testing prior knowledge, the activity creates learning.
I would add that the instructor can use an in-class audience response system, such as Kahoot, to gather answers from the student before going through the problem to see how many get it. Students like to see whether they are in the majority or minority without being singled out publically, and an anonymous audience response can do that. Long or especially complex problems can be broken down into steps with students doing it themselves one step at a time and submitting the answer in stages.
In class, time can also be used for exercises that require students to think together to solve problems. My own medical ethics classes use in-class cases that students resolve in groups, just like a real care team, and then post their solution to a blog for commentary from another team. An English class studying a novel can use in-class time for students to consider questions about character motivations or the author’s intentions. Notice how answering these might require that students return to the flipped content online during the activity.
The major lesson is that the flipped classroom does not just invert the location of student work and content delivery; it should also integrate them so that students are using one to instigate the other.
Reference:
Talbert, Robert. 2017. “Three Evolving Thoughts about Flipped Learning.” Chronical of Higher Education online. January 22, 2015.
