However, Baker said the flipped classroom method requires more work. While many instructors use educational videos other people have created, such as the popular Khan Academy free video series, instructors have to be prepared for whatever issues and questions students have. He said that’s a lot harder to prepare for than a lecture that the instructor plans ahead of time and presents.
“You’ve got to be prepared that the class could go in several different directions depending on what the students’ needs are,” he said.
Baker added that it’s important that students understand why the class is being taught in the new manner and that students don’t get overburdened with too much work and information to absorb outside of the classroom.
Because of the unpredictable nature of flipped classrooms, early on instructors for some subjects resisted the approach, such as nursing instructors, he said. Nursing students are required to pass very specific standardized tests, and they were concerned that the flipped classroom wouldn’t cover all of the material.
Baker said there can be some tradeoff that in-depth teaching doesn’t cover every aspect of a subject because of time constraints, but he said in practice the flipped classroom can balance both depth and coverage of all material and has been shown to work in subjects like nursing.
Thomas Schoenfeld is a physics professor at Fitchburg State University. He tried the flipped classroom approach for one semester in 2012 but didn’t stick with it. He taught four sessions of the same class, each about 65 students, and performed a small experiment.
He taught two of the classes the traditional way and two using the flipped method.
His results? Test scores for the different groups were no different, but Schoenfeld has a few caveats. He would give short quizzes to students at the beginning of classes to see how much they learned in class. He said flipped students did better on the first quiz, but the same on the second one.
“They knew more coming in, but they didn’t necessarily benefit from the flip,” he said. “But one way of interpreting that is I was never taking full advantage of the flip by pushing them in their exams to demonstrate their higher level of understanding.” He said he also could have had students do more activities in class.
Schoenfeld also polled students to ask what they thought of the flipped approach. Slightly more than half, 55 percent, didn’t’ like it and felt that they were having extra work heaped on them. The rest of the class liked it.
While that was the last time Schoenfeld tried the model, he’s not against it. He said it would take a lot more work to really work.
“One of the reasons I haven’t done it is that it would take a whole summer devoted to preparing the class,” he said.
Kevin Grier, an economics professor at the University of Oklahoma, switched to using the flipped classroom approach for all of his undergraduate classes. He first learned about it from a presentation he saw online by Harvard physics professor Eric Mazur.
Grier has his students watch videos from Khan Academy, Marginal Revolution University and Jodi Beggs, all of which are free to the public and available on YouTube. His students also take online quizzes, and he grades them before class. The quizzes also contain an open-ended question, and he uses those quiz results to decide what will happen in class.
Grier also lets students ask him questions during class through a private electronic message. He said a lot more students are willing to ask questions this way.
“Students nowadays really do not want to raise their hand and draw attention to themselves,” he said. By the same token, video lectures allow students to rewind without their peers knowing they are having trouble or worry about interrupting anyone.
Back in Fitchburg, Landry said he spends his summers trying to find ways to make his classes better. He started his career in Lowell a dozen years ago and came to Fitchburg eight years ago. It was four years ago he learned about the flipped classroom approach and has been using it ever since.
He said young people today watch internet videos a lot and read less than past generations.
“Why fight them on it?” said Landry. He said it makes more sense to embrace their learning style.
Distributed by the Associated Press.
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