How to Get the Most Out of the Flipped Classroom 

From the Marshall Memo #450

In this Education Week article, Katie Ash reports on recent criticisms of “flipped” classrooms (the idea of replacing traditional lectures with video tutorials, usually viewed by students at home, and using class time for hands-on, interactive learning). One concern is that students may not watch the videos. A second is that the quality of videos is not uniformly good. 

A third concern is that instructional videos have the same disadvantages as in-person lectures – students are passive recipients of knowledge. “[W]hen you step back a little bit, what you’re looking at is simply a time-shifting tool that is grounded in the same didactic, lecture-based philosophy,” says San Francisco teacher Ramsey Musallam. “It’s really a better version of a bad thing.” In his high-school chemistry classes, he starts with exploratory, guided inquiry activities to pique students’ curiosity; then students get basic instructions and materials to complete lab work and observe the phenomena they’re studying; only then do they watch videos to address misconceptions and provide direct instruction. “I say keep the flip alive,” says Masallam, “but lower the volume and think about it like we think about anything. It’s a thing you do in the context of an overarching pedagogy,” not the pedagogy itself.

Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams, Illinois teachers who began flipping their chemistry classes in 2006 and recently published a book on the subject, believe the big idea is more efficient use of homework and in-school instruction. “You need to figure out the answer to the question: What’s the best use of your face-to-face instruction time?” says Bergmann. Initially, he and Sams required students to watch videos at home, take notes, and come to class with one thoughtful question on the material. Now they’ve shifted to what they call a “mastery based” model. Students get an outline for each curriculum unit along with all the resources they will need for each objective: worksheets, textbook excerpts, and videos. Students are responsible for working through the materials at their own pace, taking tests and quizzes and performing labs when they’re ready, with the teacher acting as a resource during class time. The assessments are remixes of material so that no two students take the same one. 

Deb Wolf, a high-school instructional coach in South Dakota, sees the flipped model as a way to make time the variable and learning the constant. When she and her colleagues tried the mastery model, they found that some students used it well and others didn’t. “For students who had not been challenged in the classroom, this was an opportunity to fly,” she says. “For others, it was an opportunity to take the time that they needed to move slower. And for some, self-paced became no pace.” Teachers realized they need to set deadlines to keep everyone on track; even then, engaging reluctant learners is a challenge.

Wolf is also concerned about how different teachers use the model. “You can’t just hand the flipped classroom off to an ineffective teacher and say you’re going to transform the classrooms,” she says. “It’s not going to make a bad teacher a good teacher.” 

Ash includes a sidebar with her article with tips for effectively flipping classrooms. Her suggestions:

• Immediately address the issue of access and create alternatives for students who don’t have Internet access – for example, burning DVDs or creating lists of places students can get access.
• Be thoughtful about which parts of the curriculum to flip and when. Not everything lends itself to being flipped.
• Find a way to engage students in watching the videos – for example, requiring them to take notes, ask questions, or engage in discussion with each other.
• Don’t feel you have to create your own videos. There is excellent material available online, including Khan Academy, YouTube EDU, and PBS.
• If possible, work with a partner to create videos. “Students enjoy hearing the back-and-forth conversation of two teachers, especially when one teacher plays the role of mentor while the other plays the role of learner,” says Ash.

“Educators View ‘Flipped’ Model With a More Critical Eye” by Katie Ash in Education Week, Aug. 29, 2012 (Vol. 32, #2, p. S6-7), www.edweek.org