Flip with a half twist

I read the title for a recent Campus Technology survey claiming that 55% of faculty are flipping their classrooms. This is so far removed from my own experience so I had to read the article.

Fifty-five percent of the survey respondents said they are somewhere along the spectrum of flipping all or some of their courses, in which they ask their students to view videos or some other digital matter online before coming to school and then use class time for other activities, such as hands-on and team projects or discussions.

The details brought me back to my own reality (in other words, the title was click bait). It turns out that 14% have actually moved to a flipped model and another 41% flip some of their classrooms.

I have difficulty with the definition used to promote the flipped classroom as a new model. I understand that a couple of high school chemistry teachers generated videos to replace their presentations so they could use class time for experiments, discussion, and helping learners who were having difficulties. I apologize for not remembering their names, but their approach was what I have accepted as a flipped classroom.

What is not a flipped classroom by this interpretation.

  1. I have for years recorded a lecture when I would not be available for class. I do not regard this as putting me in the 41% category for the past decade because the video did not free up class time for other activities.
  2. Does class preparation have to involve digital content (video or other online “matter”)?Is there a difference between assigning a textbook, an ebook, or journal article pdfs as  required preclass reading? Every grad class I know of would qualify under the digital matter category?
  3. Does it have to be preclass content prepared by the classroom teacher? Would asking students to review specific video content from the Kahn archive be equivalent to video content created by the teacher?
  4. Does the amount of class preparation have to increase for a course to be flipped? If an instructor replaces an assigned textbook reading with digital content of various types has that instructor’s course now flipped?

Perhaps claiming you have flipped only meets the definition when you have reduced your in-class presentations by moving expectations for reviewing content to some time before class and in a location external to your classroom. I have always thought that this sounds like one type of homework.

Then there is that issue of what we mean by homework and whether it is really necessary. Is homework work that follows a presentation to require practice and identify learning difficulties? Is homework work that precedes class in order to allow class time to be devoted to content-related discussion and individual assistance.

Perhaps the homework debate could be resolved if we could decide on what we mean by flipping and then all would be well when it comes to our use of educational jargon.

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