Engaged Learning/Flipped Classroom

In a flipped class, students’ first exposure to the material can be through multiple channels: reading a textbook, studying primary sources, watching a video created by the course instructor (including sections of previously recorded lectures), watching an extant video created by another expert, etc. Current technologies have broadened the types of media that an instructor can assign for students’ first exposure to the course content, but there is no requirement that a flipped classroom has to use technology or multimedia resources. For example, research by Deslauriers, et al. (2011) used short (3-4 pages) readings to expose students to the content they would need to know to participate in the in-class activities. At Central, faculty are using a range of low-tech to high-tech options for the pre-class work they assign to their students. For example, Luz Amaya has created videos of her narrating a slide presentation.

Regardless of the medium in which the first exposure is delivered, there are key components to an effective first exposure assignment:

• The quantity of the material is manageable for a student to complete between class meetings.
• The relative difficulty of the material is aligned with the goals of the course and is appropriate for the level of students in the course.
• The material is necessary for students to engage with the in-class activities.
• <Students are held accountable for completing the pre-class work.> [Link to Ensuring Accountability]

Quantity

One of the greatest challenges for faculty new to the flipped classroom is assigning the “right” amount of pre-class work. It takes relative novices much longer to read a piece of literature than it does an expert, especially if the piece is heavy with jargon or technical terms. Even with video, in which it seems as if it is obvious how much time it will take someone to watch the video, instructors need to account for students watching videos at a slower speed (especially if the speaker speaks at a rapid pace or is not a particularly clear speaker, or if the student’s first language is not English), or watching the video multiple times to ensure they understand the material. It is helpful to account for any other assignments or “homework” the students are expected to complete when making a determination of how much pre-class work is assigned to students. Some instructors choose to convert all of the work that was “homework” in previous incarnations of the course into activities for the face-to-face class meetings, while other instructors decide that it is important for students to still have some “homework” that they complete outside of class and to extend learning beyond face-to-face sessions.

Designing the “right” pre-class work is often an iterative process. It is important to make it clear to students how much time you expect they will spend on their assignments prior to class and check-in periodically with them about how much time they are actually spending. Instructors also will need to make tough choices regarding syllabus content. If a particular reading is sufficient, one need not make an instructional video to accompany it, unless there is clear added value for the students (e.g., the instructor is modeling how an expert uses disciplinary skills to analyze the reading). Otherwise, the instructor may need to choose between the video and the reading, but not burden students (and themselves) with both. If an instructor adds something significant to the preparatory materials, something else might need to be removed from the syllabus to maintain feasibility for students.

Degree of Difficulty

When assigning pre-class work, it is critical for an instructor to align it, including the relative challenge of the material, with the goals of the class. If one of the learning goals for a course, for example, is that students learn how to engage with analyzing a primary source, the assigned pre-class work will need to require that of students. If the goal of the assignment is to make sure students have a basic vocabulary about and cursory understanding of the course content so that they can apply it during the in-class activities, the pre-class work can be a well digested summary of the basics without significant nuance so that students are focusing their efforts on mastering those basics; the nuances can be highlighted and explored in class.

Clear Alignment of Pre-Class Work with In-Class Activities

One of the implicit goals of flipping a class is to enable your students to get a deeper understanding of the course content and to have the immediate support of the expert (the instructor) as they do the more cognitively demanding work of synthesis, application, and evaluation. In order to facilitate student participation, the most effective pre-class work will enable your students to build a foundation before they can move on to synthesizing and applying their new knowledge in the face-to-face class sessions. Students (and faculty) need to have confidence that students are ready to move on to more challenging tasks so it is critical to ensure that the preparation before class sets students up for success in the activities planned for the day.

Additionally, research on motivation (reviewed in Ambrose et al., 2011) shows that we all lose motivation to engage in an activity when there is not a clear purpose or value to the task. The link between the pre-class assignments and the in-class activities needs to be obvious to the students or made explicit so that students do not develop the impression that they can “get away with” not doing the pre-work and still get value from the face-to-face sessions. This clear alignment is the first stepping stone toward ensuring your students are accountable for completing the pre-work.

For many instructors it is, understandably, challenging to create a lesson plan that assumes students will have the basic knowledge needed to go deeper into course content when an instructor has previously found that students don’t complete the assigned reading. For a flipped classroom to achieve its goals, students need to be held accountable for completing the pre-class work. This accountability can take many forms: quizzes (announced or pop), “entrance-ticket” assignments that students have to hand in before coming to class, graded in-class activities that cannot be successfully completed unless students arrive prepared, among others. The accountability mechanism used by Deslauriers, et al. (2011), was a series of short true-false quizzes assessing students’ understanding of the reading. These quizzes were completed online prior to the face-to-face class meetings. Faculty members at Central are using an array of accountability measures in their flipped classes, ranging from paper-and-pencil quizzes to requiring students to submit questions online prior to coming to class. A summary of different low- and high-tech ways of ensuring accountability can be seen below.

Many faculty worry that flipping their class will mean that the grading demands of the course will increase. While this concern is understandable, this may not necessarily be the case. One way to manage the time/effort demands of a flipped classroom is to critically examine which assignments need to be individually evaluated for quality of student work and which can be used in aggregate to assess student understanding. Several specific strategies for managing the grading workload include:

• Completion points: Instructors can grant a few points for having answered brief questions about the assigned pre-class work or getting a certain number of questions correct on a quiz; this also provides students an incentive to complete the assignments prior to class.
• Peer review: Pairs or small groups of students can provide feedback on their work especially when they are able to use a rubric or guiding questions to structure their feedback.
• Self-evaluation: Students can reflect on their own learning by taking an ungraded quiz and checking their responses, reviewing a checklist of ideas to determine their understanding of the subject, or by writing a reflective statement describing the concepts that are most clear and confusing to them.

In general, frequent low-stakes assessments of student understanding benefit student learning while keeping the instructor apprised of what concepts or skills are particularly challenging for students to master (Ambrose et al., 2011).

There are multiple ways instructors can integrate active learning into their classes. Central faculty who have flipped their class have used a wide range of active learning techniques. Instructors do not need to create longstanding student groups to engage their students in active learning, though. This active learning continuum graphically represents the relative complexity of different active learning techniques. It also provides brief descriptions for each of the activities on the continuum. Some of these techniques (for example, the think-pair-share) require minimal preparation on the part of the instructor and can be implemented in the moment if you recognize that students need some additional processing time to understand the concept being addressed in class. This video of Deborah Ball, School of Education, demonstrates one way that active learning can be implemented in a lecture class.

When considering flipping your class, know that the "flip" does not need to be an all-or-nothing adventure. Depending on the instructor’s goals and comfort level, the amount of time spent on active learning within a single class session may vary. Instructors may choose to implement a partial flip, where a significant portion of lecture is replaced by active learning, such as discussions of case studies or working on applied problems in small groups. In such a partial flip, instructors still lecture as part of the course delivery during the class session, but active learning is also used extensively to achieve specific learning goals. For example, instructors may lecture at the beginning of a class meeting or between activities, to clarify or synthesize the most difficult concepts, but still devote most of the class time to active learning.

Flipped classrooms vary not only in the amount of active learning per class meeting, but also in the number of class meetings per course that contain active learning. An instructor might replace just a few lectures within the course and use active learning throughout those class periods so that students can process particularly challenging concepts in class. Typically, these topics are ones that students have historically struggled with, and this type of exercise would provide them additional in-class practice and feedback.

The following frequently asked questions provide insights on best practices for managing student resistance, and a host of additional concerns commonly expressed by faculty.