What is the flipped classroom?

The idea behind the flipped classroom is pretty simple—instead of giving a lecture during class time, you ask your students to watch a lecture video or videos at home, and you use in-class time to help your students with exercises and projects or have discussions about the lecture content.

Essentially, rather than spending your class time lecturing, you spend it working with students.

What are the advantages?

One of the major advantages of the flipped classroom model is that students no longer have to try to understand or write down what the teacher is saying as he or she says it. Instead, students can pause lecture videos at any point they see fit and replay them so they don't miss anything. Pausing gives them time for reflection about what they're learning, and replaying can help them understand tough or especially complex points. Students can truly learn at their own pace.

Another major advantage is that you spend most of your classroom time working directly with students, correcting them when their ideas/execution of concepts are off the mark. This allows you to spend more time with students who really need your help.

What are the disadvantages?

Putting together a flipped classroom takes work. There are some good videos on English/Language Arts subjects on the internet, but if you want to have videos tailored specifically to what you're teaching, you're going to have to make them on your own. And that takes time and resources.

And of course, the in-class work you do has to connect very closely to the lectures your students watch the night before—otherwise, you could have a bunch of confused students on your hands.

Any questions? Let us know!

There's a lot more we could say about the flipped classroom, (and no doubt we'll say more in the future).

But in the meantime, if you have questions about switching over to a flipped classroom format, feel free to email us. We'll help you find the answers you need.