Flipped Classroom
Flipped Classroom Model Photography: Faculty Innovation Center, The University of Texas at Austin.
Flipped classroom is an instructional strategy that reverses the traditional learning environment by delivering instructional content outside of the classroom, often online. It moves activities, including those that may have traditionally been considered homework, into the classroom. In a flipped classroom, students watch online lectures, collaborate in online discussions, or carry out research at home. Then, students engage with concepts in the classroom, often within small groups and with the guidance of the instructor.
Traditional Instruction
In the traditional model of classroom instruction, the instructor is typically the central focus of a lesson and the primary disseminator of information during the class period. The instructor responds to questions while students defer directly to the instructor for guidance and feedback. In a classroom with a traditional style of instruction, individual lessons may be focused on an explanation of content utilizing a lecture-style. Class discussions are typically centered on the instructor, who controls the flow of the conversation. Typically, this pattern of teaching also involves giving students the task of reading from a textbook or practicing a concept by working on a problem set, outside of class time.
The Flipped Model
The flipped classroom intentionally shifts instruction to a learner-centered model in which class time explores topics in greater depth and creates meaningful learning opportunities. Educational technologies, such as online videos, are used to deliver content outside of the classroom. In a flipped classroom, content delivery may take a variety of forms. Often, video lessons prepared by the instructor or third parties are used to deliver content, although online collaborative discussions, digital research, and text readings may be used.
The real focus of the flipped classroom is not the production of lecture videos, but rather in-class activities that there is now time to take part in. These activities may include more traditional homework problems, often worked in groups, or other active-learning exercises.
Additionally, these types of active learning exercises allow more time to be spent in class on higher-order thinking skills such as problem solving as students tackle difficult problems, work in groups, research, and construct knowledge with the help of their instructor and peers.
A instructor's interaction with students in a flipped classroom can be more personalized and less didactic, and students are actively involved in knowledge acquisition and construction as they participate in and evaluate their learning.
Resources
How to Flip a Class, Faculty Innovation Center The University of Texas at Austin
7 Things You Should Know About... Flipped Classrooms, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative
Flipped Classroom Field Guide - The Flipped Classroom Field Guide is a compilation of best-practices and community resources centered around the flipped classroom and blended learning initiatives of the Coursera-partner community.
Attribution
Portions of this work are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. It is attributed to Wikipedia, and the original version can be found at here.