Flip the Classroom



Flipped classroom or flip teaching is a form of blended learning in which students teach and switch roles with teachers. They also learn content online by watching video lectures, usually at home, and what used to be homework (assigned problems) is now done in class with teachers and students discussing and solving questions more personalized guidance and interaction with students, instead of lecturing. This is also known as backwards classroom, inverted classroom, reverse teaching, and the Thayer Method.

Traditional vs flipped teaching
The traditional pattern of teaching has been to assign students to read textbooks and work on problem sets outside school, while listening to lectures and taking tests in class.

"'My AP Calculus class was a really anxious environment, it was weird trying to get through way too much material with not enough time. It was exactly the opposite of what I was looking for when I got into teaching.' (A teacher explaining what motivated her to adopt flipped teaching.)"

In flip teaching, the students first study the topic by themselves, typically using video lessons prepared by the teacher or third parties. In class students apply the knowledge by solving problems and doing practical work. The teacher tutors the students when they become stuck, rather than imparting the initial lesson in person. Complementary techniques include differentiated instruction and project-based learning. Teachers are blending flipped learning with traditional in-class lecturing through tools like eduCanon that keep students accountable to video lessons at home through time-embedded formative assessments.

Flipped classrooms free class time for hands-on work. Students learn by doing and asking questions. Students can also help each other, a process that benefits both the advanced and less advanced learners.

Flipping also changes the allocation of teacher time. Traditionally, the teacher engages with the students who ask questions — but those who don’t ask tend to need the most attention. “We refer to ‘silent failers,’ ” said one teacher, claiming that flipping allows her to target those who need the most help rather than the most confident. Flipping changes teachers from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side”, allowing them to work with individuals or groups of students throughout the session.

In addition to assisting the students, flipped classrooms give parents the opportunity to view the same class materials and instruction as the students. Viewing the teacher's instruction methods gives parents the confidence to assist their child with the same teaching style and helps with homework support.

History
Eric Mazur developed peer instruction in the 1990s. He found that computer-aided instruction allowed him to coach instead of lecture. Lage, Platt and Treglia published the paper "Inverting the Classroom: A Gateway to Creating an Inclusive Learning Environment" in 2000. In 1993, King published "From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side" in College Teaching, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Winter, 1993), pp. 30–35. Baker presented "The classroom flip: using web course management tools to become the guide by the side" at the 11th International Conference on College Teaching and Learning. Baker's article presents the model of classroom flipping.

Starting in fall 2000, the University of Wisconsin-Madison used eTeach software to replace lectures in a computer science course with streaming video of the lecturer and coordinated slides. In 2011, two centers at Wisconsin Collaboratory for Enhanced Learning were built to focus on flipped and blended learning.

In 2004, Salman Khan began to record videos at the request of a younger cousin who felt that recorded lessons would let her skip parts she had mastered and replay parts that were troubling her. Khan’s model essentially provides one-to-one tutoring. Khan Academy videos are used as part of some educators' flipped teaching strategy.

In the "The Classroom Flip" (2006), Tenneson and McGlasson presented an approach for teachers considering whether to flip their classrooms and how various approaches could enhance their teaching process, along. It also explores computer course management systems.

Dr. Bill Brantley presented a flipped classroom model at the 2006 American Political Science Association's Teaching and Learning Conference where he described how to use two simulations for classroom meetings while moving content delivery to an online LMS.

In 2007, Jeremy Strayer published his dissertation research conducted at The Ohio State University entitled "The effects of the classroom flip on the learning environment: a comparison of learning activity in a traditional classroom and a flip classroom that used an intelligent tutoring system." This study highlighted the importance of attending to the ways the coordination of out-of-class and in-class activities can positively and negatively influence how students engage course tasks.

Clintondale High School
In 2011 Michigan's Clintondale High School flipped every class. Principal Greg Green had been posting YouTube videos on baseball techniques for his son’s team. He then worked with social studies teacher, Andy Scheel, to run two classes with identical material and assignments, one flipped and one conventional. The flipped class had many students who had already failed the class — some multiple times. After 20 weeks flipped students were outperforming traditional students. No flipped student class scored lower than a C+. The previous semester 13 percent had failed. The traditional classroom showed no change.

Clintondale had been designated as among the state's worst 5 percent. In 2010 more than half of ninth graders had failed science, and almost half had failed math. That year, the 9th grade flipped. The English failure rate dropped from 52 percent to 19 percent; in math, from 44 percent to 13 percent; in science, from 41 percent to 19 percent; and in social studies, from 28 percent to 9 percent. After 2011 the now-flipped school's failure rate dropped from 30 to 10 percent. Graduation rates soared above 90 percent. College attendance went from 63 percent in 2010 to 80 percent in 2012. Results on standardized tests went up in 2012 and then dropped, although complicated by student body changes.

Teachers found that shorter videos (3–6 minutes) were the most effective. The school uses audio files, readings and videos from the Khan Academy, TED and other sources. Students favored the changes. Students unable to watch the videos at home watch the videos in school.

Notable teachers
Flipping is still in the early stages, with much experimentation about how to do it right. Its most important popularizers are not government officials or academic experts, but Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann, a pair of high school chemistry teachers in Woodland Park, Colo., who wrote a book called “Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day,” drawing almost completely on their own experience. It has not been rigorously studied (most people cite only this one research paper). Flipping’s track record in schools, while impressive, is anecdotal and short. But many people are holding it up as a potential model of how to use technology to humanize the classroom.

Mathematics
In 2006, Maesumi taught a flipped Calculus I class at Lamar University. Students in the flipped class significantly outperformed the controls in Calculus II.

Stacey Roshan, a high school math teacher in Potomac, Maryland, reduced student anxiety through flexible testing and student created content. Her mother, also a math teacher, used the videos her daughter had created, as well.

In 2012, Crystal Kirch, a high school math teacher in Santa Ana, California, developed a "Watch, Summary, Question" (WSQ, pronounced "whisk") assignment cycle, writing about it on her blog, her class website, and posting to her YouTube channel.

In 2012, Graham Johnson, a high school math teacher in Kelowna, British Columbia hosted the first-ever flipped learning conference in Canada.

Science
In 2007, Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams, both high school science teachers at Woodland Park High School in Woodland Park, Colorado, implemented their own version of the flipped classroom by first moving all of their direct instruction to online videos, and then introducing the Flipped-Mastery model during the 2008-2009 school year, chronicled in their book "Flip Your Classroom, Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day.

In 2012, Marc Seigel, a chemistry teacher at a public school in New Jersey presented at Flipped Learning Conference in Chicago his strategies, successes and failures in teaching, he also writes about on his blog.

In 2012, Carolyn Durley, a biology teacher in Kelowna, British Columbia, co-hosted Canadian Flipped Learning Conference.

In 2012, Richard Pierce and Jeremy Fox detailed their experiences in Pharmacy Education at Shenandoah University in Am J Pharm Educ. 2012 Dec 12;76(10):196. doi: 10.5688/ajpe7610196. Vodcasts and active-learning exercises in a "flipped classroom" model of a renal pharmacotherapy module.

Foreign languages
In 2013, Ellen Dill, a French teacher at Ashland Middle School (now at King Philip Regional High School) presented "Offering Students Choice in a Flipped Classroom" at flipcon13.

Computer programming
In 2013, José Riquelme, a Spanish teacher at University of Sevilla (Spain) established the blog with videos recorded at live in your classroom of programming languages C and Java in Spanish.

Flipped mastery
Traditionally, each topic in class receives a fixed amount of time for all students. Students who do not master the material get no extra time. Mastery learning upends this approach, by requiring each student to master the topic before moving to the next one. Flipped mastery learning applies the mastery concept to flipped classrooms.

Mastery learning was briefly popular in the 1920s, and was revived by Benjamin Bloom in 1968. It has shown dramatic success. The teacher provides materials, tools and support. Students set goals and manage their time.

Mastery rewards students for displaying competence. Students who initially turn in shoddy work must correct it before moving on. Before flipping, mastery learning was impractical in most schools. It was not possible to give different lectures for different groups of students. Testing was also impractical, because fast-learning students could reveal the test to those who followed.

In a flipped mastery classroom, students view each lecture and work on each exercise or project when they have mastered the precursors. As of 2013 only a few teachers had blended flipping and mastery.

Tim Kelly, winner of the Presidential Award for Mathematics and Science Teaching, adopted flipped mastery with his colleagues Corey Sullivan and Mike Brust. Sullivan estimated that 40 to 60 hours of work outside school for each of 12 units per course were required the first year. Another Presidential Award winner, Spencer Bean, converted after his daughter went through Kelly’s class.

Flipped mastery eliminates two other out-of-class routines: daily lesson planning and grading papers. The latter happens in class and in person. Replacing lectures with group and individual activities increases in-class activity. Every student has something to do throughout the class. In some classes, students choose how to demonstrate mastery - testing, writing, speaking, debating and even designing a related game. Moodle provides one way to manage the testing process. It creates a different test for each student from a pool of questions. Advocates claim that its efficiency allows most students to do a year’s work in much less time. Advanced students work on independent projects while slower learners get more personalized instruction. Some students might not get through the year’s material, but demonstrated competence on the parts they did complete.