Example Flipped Lesson: Academic English

📌 The “Lesson Overview” gives students a clear outline of what they will learn and what is expected of them for a lesson/week. 

In this example, the overview starts with objectives. There are two objectives: one for the pre-class activities and one for the in-class. Think of these objectives as hypotheses, with your instruction serving as the intervention. Based on this approach, one should measure the objectives of a lesson/week to not only provide their students with practice but also to evaluate the success of their lesson/week.

After, the overview provides key vocabulary as research shows that students who review key terminology before a lesson learn more from the lesson.

Finally, the overview specifies what students are expected to do in each part of the lesson, priming student for upcoming activities.

📌 The "Pre-class video" is where the foundational material for the lesson or week is provided to students. For most courses, this is usually theoretical content aligned with the lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy: Remembering and Understanding. The content does not have to be a video; it can be reading, simulation, or other formats. The purpose of pre-class content is to ensure students are familiar with as much content as possible before class, enabling more active learning during class. However, lengthy pre-class content can easily discourage students from completing it.

📌 The “Pre-class Quiz” is a low-stakes assessment designed to hold students accountable for engaging with the pre-class content and to reinforce their learning. The quiz typically consists of about 10 questions, all targeting the Remembering and Understanding levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, aligning well with the objective of the pre-class which is to build foundational knowledge. Additionally, the quiz allows for multiple or unlimited attempts and contributes only a small portion to the total course grade. Since students just begin to learn the material, these options help create a fair learning environment and discourage cheating. The quiz deadline should be set before class, but not shortly before to prevent last-minute submissions. Finally, some instructors choose to administer the pre-class assessment in class at the start of the lesson; research shows this approach yields results as good as, or better than, online completion.

📌 This learning activity is often also referred to as a “Transition Activity”, as it connects the pre-class to the in-class. Although it takes place during class time, it almost always targets the Remembering and Understanding levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. The purpose of the task is to have students to recall what they learned before class.

This activity is valuable for several reasons. First, it reinforces learning by requiring students to retrieve prior knowledge. Second, it allows the instructor to gather concrete evidence of what students remember, rather than assuming whether or not they engaged with the before class content. In fact, the activity directly asks students to demonstrate the behavior stated in the before class objective of the lesson: “List the qualities of academic and non-academic sources.” Together with the pre-class quiz results, this provides the instructor with a clearer picture of students’ engagement with the pre-class materials and achievement of the objective.

In this task, students are asked to list the qualities of academic and non-academic sources introduced in the pre-class video. They work in small groups, which creates a natural pressure for students who did not prepare to engage more seriously next time. The version of the task shown here was designed for online learning, but it can easily be adapted for face-to-face classrooms. For example, each group could be given a marker and asked to write their answers on classroom boards or windows. Having this information available on the boards and windows not only allows for quick instructor feedback but also serves as learning support (scaffold) for students during the subsequent activities.

📌 Now it is time to put into practice what was learned in the before class stage. From this point forward, tasks should aim at the higher-order levels of Bloom’s taxonomy: Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create.

When students first attempt to apply newly learned knowledge, they often need guidance. This support helps them persist with the task, making it more likely that they will seize the opportunity for practice and experience a sense of accomplishment. At the same time, however, it is crucial to design tasks with an element of desirable difficulty, so that learning is effective.

Although the ultimate learning objective of this lesson is to "Find reliable academic sources on the internet." students are not expected to practice this immediately. Instead, at this stage, they are simply asked to identify the type of instructor provide sources and are given a flowchart to support them. This allows them to practice evaluating reliability in a structured way before moving to independent application. In this example provided, students work with three sources to identify. In the original lesson, however, they encountered more examples, with the level of difficulty gradually increasing.

📌 This final activity of the lesson provides students with an opportunity to practice the learning objective with little to no support. It also gives you valuable insight into how much your students have learned and how successful your lesson/week has been.

In this example, each student writes down a question they are curious about on a collaborative canvas (e.g., Padlet). They then search for a reliable academic source that addresses their question and post the source on the canvas. Students work individually and independently, directly engaging with the lesson objective: "Find reliable academic sources on the internet."

Afterward, students pair up to exchange feedback. However, feedback can take different forms. For instance, since the work is done digitally, the instructor can monitor student submissions in real time, select one strong, one weak, and one average response, and use these examples for whole-class feedback. This approach allows students to see a range of possible answers, reflect on the differences, and compare them with their own work.