Tuesday, November 26, 2013

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.  



Helpful Links:
Vanderbilt Center for Teaching page on Flipping the Classroom:
Flipped Learning Network: http://flippedclassroom.org/

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