Flipping the Classroom

Looking to add some variety to your teaching routine?  Maybe it’s time to think about turning your classroom upside down!  Not literally, of course, just in the way content is presented to your students.  Flipping the classroom, a hot topic in pedagogy thanks to several high profile articles, takes the standard instructional model and turns it on its head.

To tease out what exactly flipping the classroom is, this blog post will address 3 main questions:  1) What is flipping the classroom? 2) Does it work? 3) How can I begin to flip my classroom?

1) What is flipping the classroom?

First, as I’ve already hinted that flipping the classroom is a complete inversion of traditional teaching, it is important to think about what has been the status quo in many classrooms. This standard method of instruction involves students doing assigned reading before coming to class, listening to a lecture during class time and then going through problem sets or producing another form of assignment for homework.  Flipping the classroom encompasses a change where what students would normally do in the classroom is now what is done at home, while the homework will be done in class. 

To elaborate, students would watch a video of a lecture or voiced over PowerPoint before coming to class.  To ensure that students complete the preparatory work some incentive should be in place whether it involves a quick on-line quiz before coming to class or having to turn in some form of written work.  The real value of this flipping technique comes from what happens next.  Rather than students passively learning through their teacher lecturing during class, they will be actively engaged with hands-on projects, lab experiments or problem sets that would normally constitute their homework.  The presence of the teacher during this process allows for immediate feedback, mini-lectures when necessary, and question and answer time for anything students found unclear in the video lectures.

As you can see, the theory behind flipping the classroom is that in-class time will become much more active which will result in better learning outcomes for our students, a topic covered earlier in the semester by another of our fellows, Ashley.  For those of you familiar with Bloom’s taxonomy, it might also be clear that the lower levels of Bloom’s are accomplished outside of the classroom while higher order thinking skills are developed and nurtured inside the classroom. 

This leads us to our second question.  Does it work?

In short, most evidence would point to yes! One test of flipping the classroom, performed by Carl Weiman and colleagues in a large enrollment undergraduate physics class, examined the benefits of flipping the classroom by assessing student performance after a unit was taught in a flipped classroom style¹.  For their experiment, they chose two large introductory Physics lectures that had approximately 270 students each.  The courses were taught with an identical approach (i.e. our standard lecture model) for the first 11 weeks of the semester. During week 12, however, one classroom was flipped while the other retained the standard lecture model of instruction.  In the experimental classroom, students were assigned readings on which they took a short true/false quiz before coming to class.  During class time, students were answering clicker questions with peer instruction and working in small groups. 

Having baseline data on student attendance, engagement and academic performance during the first 11 weeks of the semester provided evidence that the student populations in both classes were roughly equal in all categories assessed.  After the flipped classroom test, however, measurements of attendance and engagement dramatically increased for students in the experimental course while student attendance and engagement remained steady in the standard lecture. As a final measure of learning outcomes, the instructors gave an identical multiple choice exam to students from both courses.  The scores showed that students in the experimental section did twice as well as their counterparts in the standard lecture course.

There is evidence that flipping the classroom works in K-12 education levels as well.  Take for example, Clintondale High School, just north of Detroit². Andy Scheel, a social studies teacher, was the first to attempt flipping the classroom at Clintondale. He ran two parallel classes that covered the same content and used the same assessments for student performance.  One was traditional and one was flipped. The only notable difference between students in the sections was that students in the flipped classroom had a history of struggling with the material as several had failed the course at least once.  At the end of the semester, no student in the flipped classroom received a grade less than a C+; a marked improvement from previous semesters.

After this initial experiment, every class in the school is being transitioned to be taught in this flipped manner.  The success of their students is evident in the numbers now passing standardized state wide exams.

Now that we have looked at some evidence that flipping the classroom is beneficial for student performance, what are some tips for flipping your own classroom?

As with any pedagogical change, starting small can be a good thing!  Try out flipping a specific class that covers a concept that you know is challenging for students or that you have a great activity planned for that would be rushed when planned for the same class as a longer lecture. Also start small with the media that you supply your students for the at home lecture viewing.  Many people use instructional lecture-based videos as the new prep work for class, but this does not mean that you need to find a way to film yourself giving a lecture.  Thanks to ample online resources from the Kahn Academy, YouTube, TED, and recorded university lectures including Open Yale Courses; you can likely find a previously taped lecture that will serve your purposes.  The main criteria when choosing media should be that the content covered in them provides the background your students will need to  meet the learning goals set for the next class.

When contemplating flipping your classroom, even if only for one session, it is important to make sure to communicate with your students about what is happening.  For many students, this will be a new experience and understanding what to expect and the benefits that flipping the classroom has for them is incredibly important.  After explaining the new process to students, hold them accountable for completing tasks assigned to be finished before class!  The shape this takes is up to you but one common form is a quick quiz. 

After all the prep work to make the flipped classroom a reality, the actual instructional time is your moment to enjoy the fruits of all your hard work!  Use a variety of active learning strategies from the use of clickers to group problem solving exercises.  If looking for more information on active learning ideas for your classroom, make sure to check out other resources from the YTC-active learning is something we are all proponents of here!

I hope you found this blog post on the flipped classroom useful.  As flipping the classroom is a broad topic, of which only the surface has been skimmed in this post, check out the links below for more information.  In particular, UT at Austin’s Center for Teaching and Learning has an excellent page on how to flip your classroom with some video interviews of faculty from a variety of disciplines that have taken the plunge and flipped entire courses.  

1 DesLauriers L, Schelew E, and Wieman C (2011). Improved learning in a large-enrollment physics class. Science 332: 862-864.  

 2  http://www.flippedhighschool.com/

Helpful Links:

NY Times Opinion Piece on Flipping the Classroom: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/09/turning-education-upside-down/

Vanderbilt Center for Teaching page on Flipping the Classroom:

http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/teaching-guides/teaching-activities/flipping-the-classroom/

Flipped Learning Network: http://flippedclassroom.org/

UT at Austin Center for Teaching and Learning on Flipping the Classroom: http://ctl.utexas.edu/ctl/sites/default/files/7%20Things%20You%20Should%20Know%20about%20the%20Flipped%20Classrooms%20EDUCAUSE%20%C2%A92012.pdf

Crafting a stronger teaching statement

Erica De Bruin

The teaching statement (or teaching “philosophy”) has rapidly become a required part of the job market packet for aspiring assistant professors. Of the 62 positions I applied for in political science this year, 47 requested a teaching statement or portfolio. Yet even for those who have prioritized developing their teaching skills, writing the teaching statement is no easy task. (Just ask Miti, a former YTC fellow, who blogged about the challenges of writing the statement last fall).

In writing a teaching statement, the aim is to convince a search committee that you are an effective and engaging teacher whose approach to teaching fits with the institution’s. This is, of course, easier said than done.

When I sat down to write my own statement, my first instinct was to start cataloguing all of the nifty instructional strategies I use in the classroom to facilitate student learning and organize the statement around these strategies (e.g., “I use group work! And peer instruction! And cater to my students diverse learning styles!”).

The result was less than inspiring. For example, an early draft of my teaching statement contained the passage:  

While explaining the concept of “conditional independence” to students, I described it in words, illustrated it visually, worked through a sample few problems, and finally pointed students towards written explanations of the concept in the professor’s lecture notes and in our text.

Now, these are all reasonable approaches to teaching students about conditional independence in an introductory statistics course. But my litany is dry and unmemorable -- certainly not something that would stick with a search committee member wading through hundreds of teaching statements.

I decided to follow the advice of a Teaching Center colleague, who suggested focusing on a smaller number of more detailed examples. In reading through others’ teaching statements, I realized that it was these longer stories that ended up sticking with me. Consider the following excerpt from a teaching statement written by Celia Paris, a former YTC fellow and PhD Candidate in Political Science at Yale:  

I had my Introduction to American Politics students split up into four groups, with each group drafting a two-sentence explanation of the interpretation of the commerce clause in a particular Supreme Court case and then sharing it with the class. Immediately after each presentation, the case was handed over to students in another group, who had just five minutes to apply the interpretation of the commerce clause from this second case to the details of the first case. (Students who had struggled with keeping their interpretation to two sentences began to see the value in succinct communication as the room buzzed and the seconds ticked by.) After a second presentation, groups switched cases once more and used the interpretation of the commerce clause in the third case to make an argument for whether or not “Obamacare” should be considered constitutional. Not only did this activity get students engaged in interpreting multiple court cases and holding each other accountable for explaining the material effectively, but by the end students were startled and intrigued by the variety they saw in interpretations of the Commerce Clause.  

There are three aspects of this anecdote that I found particularly effective in showcasing Celia’s teaching. (Her full statement can be found here). First, the writing is vivid (the classroom “buzzed,” the seconds “ticked by”). Second, the story is discipline-specific. Celia provides enough detail that another political scientist is likely to understand the context of the assignment. Finally, it is student-centered. Throughout, the emphasis is on what students were doing, how they reacted to the assignment (they “struggled,” “began to see value,” “were startled and intrigued”). Framing the story in this also way allowed Celia to connect the activity to specific learning goals (“interpreting multiple court cases and holding each other accountable for explaining the material”).

With these considerations in mind, I took another stab at it the statement. I began by thinking back to class meetings in which the discussion was particularly animated or I tried a new activity and thought it paid off, or times when I got particularly positive feedback from a student. For each, I wrote down both what I did and how the students responded. I also made sure to set the stage by including details about the topic or readings under discussion.

In the end, I had a set of short, colorful stories that (I think!) better advertise my strengths as a teacher. For example, to illustrate how I incorporate students’ prior knowledge in my classrooms, I included the following vignette in my revised statement:

In a recent seminar on the causes of civil war, I began by asking students to spend a minute jotting down whether there had been a civil war in their country of origin or current residence, and if so, what they thought caused it. Students were shocked at the sheer number of different causes they identified, as well as the extent of disagreement they had over conflicts many knew a great deal about, such as the U.S. Civil War. I used these observations to set up a lively discussion about what we, as social scientists, mean when we say that one thing causes another.

And in demonstrating the utility of peer learning, I offered this anecdote:

In teaching a seminar on emerging security challenges in Central Asia, for instance, I broke students into small groups and had them research the answers to a short series of questions about the politics, economics, and demographics of a particular country in the region. They input their responses into a Google Document that became a shared resource for the class. In subsequent discussions, students were able to bring their country-specific knowledge to bear on questions ranging from the role of Islam in the region to the prospects for political reform, successfully avoiding the kind of broad generalizations about the region that had plagued prior discussions. They also clearly relished the opportunity to become an expert on their adopted country (one exclaimed after the seminar concluded that it had been “seriously the best seminar ever!”).

If you faced similar challenges in writing your own teaching statement and adopted similar or differing approaches, tell us about it in the comments!

Teaching Students with Diverse Religious Backgrounds

Hi Everyone! My name is Sara Ronis and I’m a fifth-year PhD candidate in Religious Studies. Modern classrooms are global and cosmopolitan spaces, and our students represent a diversity of race, class, gender-identities, sexual orientations, and religions. Today I wanted to talk about an issue that comes up in Religious Studies, but also in the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities more broadly: the diversity of religious traditions and faiths that our students bring to the classroom.  

Talking about religious diversity is not just an issue of minimizing conflict or damage control. It’s a powerful opportunity to bring different perspectives and values in conversation with each other and improve everyone’s learning. 

Religious issues come up when we as teachers are not familiar with the needs or expectations of our students (for example, religious clothing, prohibitions, holy days, and times of fasting).  Students may ask for a test to be moved, or an assignment deferred, for a religious event.  They also may not be comfortable with activities that involve specific food items, or have certain modesty restrictions that affect dress or physical behavior.  A great resource here at Yale is the Chaplain’s office, which puts out a calendar with all religious holidays, and is happy to talk through religious issues with any student or teacher.

Religious issues also, and perhaps most prominently, come up when students may not be comfortable with our fields’ approaches to issues that touch on religion and religious values (whether that is in a course on the Hebrew bible, a course on evolutionary biology, or a course on politics or history). 

But religious issues around student expectations can for the most part be avoided with a little reflection and planning before the semester even starts.  In order to shape informed, engaged students in a classroom marked by open inquiry and mutual respect, we need to understand where our students are coming from and make sure not to come across as flippant or dismissive. While issues may come up over the course of the semester, a little prevention goes a long way.

1.  Know your audience. Are your students mostly religious or not? Do they come from a particular denominational background?  Are they a diverse group of people, or a relatively homogenous group? What does authority look like to them?  Ask colleagues in your department who have taught at your institution before about the demographics of their courses.*  
2.     Know your institution.  Are you teaching at a public college, a private college, or a divinity school or seminary? Does your institution have particular religious expectations of faculty?  Read the university websites and talk to administrators to find out. 
3.   Know yourself. Are you someone who is comfortable sharing their own religious affiliations and journeys, if you’ve had them? Can you use those experiences in ways that enhance student learning without missionizing?  Would you prefer not to talk about religion at all?
4. Know potential issues that might come up. What are some of the common conflicts that come up in your field? How prepared are you for addressing them as they come up? How would you react if a student said something offensive or inaccurate about another religion in class? Talk to mentors and colleagues in your field for ideas.  

So, if you’re teaching political science at a small private religious college, your approach to various issues in political theory might be different than if you were teaching at a large public state university. But this is not to suggest that you should ever censor yourself or your field! That is worth repeating: You do not need to censor yourself. But you do need to plan ahead to be able explain to students the stakes of the disagreements in your field, and why the scholarship has taken the shape that it has. If your work disagrees with a particular religious tradition, you need to be able to explain why your scholarly approach differs, and what it has to offer.   

Bottom line: don’t be afraid to teach religiously diverse groups. Different perspectives will make you look at your work in different ways, and articulate why the work you do is important.The rewards of having a broad range of students with their own passions getting engaged in the subjects you teach far outweigh the time it takes to prepare to teach such a diverse cohort of students.  

Feel free to share concerns, experiences and ideas in the comments section below!

*Note: According to a lawyer I spoke to, it may be illegal in some states to ask students about their religious backgrounds in a public classroom setting. So don’t do that.