To understand what it means to flip a class or to attend a flipped classroom, it helps first to understand the traditional model–i.e. the model used before the idea of flipped classrooms became popular.
The Traditional Classroom
In a traditional classroom, students come to class and spend hours listening to the teacher give them a lecture. Then they go home and review the lecture and do home work to help them learn further. Students may have difficulty at home with their home work but don’t have a teacher there to help them clarify things on the spot.
The flipped classroom is an innovative learning approach that reverses the traditional approach providing learners with great benefits.
The Flipped Classroom
The flipped classroom model flips things around. Instead of students listening to lectures during their class time, they are assigned pre-recorded lectures to watch at home. This frees the teacher to focus on helping students during the class time that in the traditional classroom would be spent giving the lecture. Students spend class time either working in groups or doing home work with the teacher around to be consulted if they need any help. Flipped classrooms have tremendous benefits. Because lecture material is recorded, students can rewind videos if they miss a particular point. Students can also revisit it at any time. In addition to that, students get to have time with the teacher during which they can go over any difficulties with the content.
For more on Flipped Classrooms, visit this UT Austin webpage.
