What is a flipped classroom?

The term 'flipped classroom' gained popularity around 2007 from teachers Aaron Sams and Jon Bergman (from Woodland Park High School, Colorado, USA). They realised that class time would be better spent guiding knowledge and providing feedback rather than delivering direct instruction. Bergman and Sams (2012) found that direct instruction could be delivered by recording video content for students to engage with before class (and any time), therefore freeing up class time for activities that allow deeper exploration of content.

The key purpose of the flipped classroom is to engage students in active learning where there is a greater focus on students' application of conceptual knowledge rather than factual recall.

Adapted from 'What is the Flipped Classroom?', University of Queensland,

http://www.uq.edu.au/teach/flipped-classroom/what-is-fc.html (date accessed 1/6/17)

Why flip?

There are many good reasons to introduce flipped classroom pedagogy into your teaching practice.

1. Students have the opportunity to go over the same content as many times as they like or need to. One thing most teachers would like is more time; often that means more time to teach their students content. Using flipped pedagogy means you are creating a resource that can be used independent of your time and presence in the classroom - it enables students to have more than one opportunity to be taught the information, it allows students who miss that crucial lesson access to your expertise, and it also provides you with a resource that can you use , share and in some cases adapt, over and over again.O
2. You can spend more time in the classroom working WITH your students. It is often the case in lessons that, as a teacher, you spend a large chunk of the lesson explaining information and delivering content to students. Most of the time this means less time for students to practise their skills and/or demonstrate their knowledge with you there guiding them through rich tasks. Using flipped pedagogy means students can access the content before the lesson (or again during if they need to) so the precious time you have with them in class can be spent helping and working with them.
3. It creates a more student-centred learning environment. Even though you or your voice might be front and centre as an on-screen presence, flipped pedagogy means that students are in greater control of their learning, and the focus of lessons can be about them and what they're doing. This is a much more student-centred approach which gives teachers the opportunity to 'guide from the side'.
4. Videos are helpful in maximising working memory. "Evidence suggests that working memory can be subdivided into auditory and visual streams (Baddeley 1983, 2002; Baddeley & Hitch 1974), so presenting information using both auditory and visual working memory can increase working memory capacity (Penney 1989)." This is called 'the modality effect' and it essentially means that students can maximise (and potentially increase) their working memory when information is presented in an audio-visual manner. Videos do exactly this for students, so even if they are only accessing the videos within a classroom setting, they will still gain more benefit in terms of remembering information and being able to use that information than if they are provided with worksheet or textbook.