In this digital age, it is vital that educational practices keep up with the times. It is not practical to have students pouring over old reference books in the library when they have an entire network of resource materials at the tips of their thumbs. Because of this, a new type of teaching is emerging. This style of learning is called “flipped classrooms,” and it is making a wave in the academic community.
The term “flipped classroom” applies to several different teaching approaches. Some flipped classrooms require students to listen to lectures on their own time and spend classroom time engaged in small-group discussion and group presentations. Other flipped classrooms have students taking quizzes at home and comparing answers during class. Another approach is to have all coursework online and exclusively reserve in-class time for discussion. The common denominator among all of these approaches is that they allow instructors to spend more time during school speaking directly to students and less time handing out quizzes, lecturing, or providing notes.
That is the first reason flipped classrooms work: because they allow for more one-on-one interaction. Because class time isn’t spent lecturing, teachers can invest more of themselves in their students. As well, students have more opportunity to interact with each other.
The second reason flipped classrooms are so successful is thanks to a new type of devices and software that require audience response. By integrating digital audience response into the course work, gone are the days of students sitting in the back of the classroom and sleeping through the lecture. This kind of participation can work more than one way: either the student checks in through a device when in the classroom and answer questions posed to the entire class, or they are required to check in and answer questions from home. Either way, it stimulates students, makes participation unavoidable, and requires every student stay accountable for their education.
The third advantage of flipped classrooms is that they give students the freedom to learn at their own pace. If a student is assigned a lecture for homework, they have the ability to re-watch that lecture as many times as needed to reach understanding. If a student doesn’t understand a quiz question, often times they are rewarded participation credit, and then the teacher makes a point of reviewing that question in class. Some learners need to reread notes many times to understand them; the flipped classroom approach gives them this freedom without sacrificing other learning experiences. By making coursework required outside of class, teachers can then spend class time deepening understanding of that work. Flipped classrooms also give students a greater opportunity to voice their opinions and participate. A lot of teachers offer an online forum where students can pose questions to one another and engage in lengthy discussions. This type of student engagement is not always an option in a traditional classroom setting, particularly when so much time in traditional classrooms is chewed up by lectures and quiz taking.
The fourth reason flipped classrooms benefit students is because they permit personalized education and cut out unnecessary review. If a teacher gives a quiz through an audience response device, they have an immediate benchmark for how well their entire class is grasping the course material. This allows a teacher to in-the-moment tailor that day’s activities to best suit their students’ needs. If ninety-five percent of the class grasps a concept, the teacher can invite the other five percent to see them after class and use lecture time to focus on other less-understood aspects of the course work. As well, students can give professors immediate feedback on what they think is most important to their course work. This way, each time a teacher instructs a particular course, the learning trajectory will be best suited to that specific group of students.
The fifth reason to praise flipped classrooms is because they give instructors more liberty in how they teach. An enthusiastic teacher makes a better teacher. Some teachers are not suited for lectures; the practice of flipped classrooms gives them the option of posting their lectures via online video and using classroom time to work in small-grounp discussions. Another teacher might hate grading quizzes; the advent of audience response devices will instantly do the grading for them, allowing them to immediately implement the results in their teaching lecture.
Flipped classrooms remove the element of time from education. In having coursework and lectures available online, students are more active participants in their learning experiences. Lightening the load on teachers allows them to perform their best when face-to-face with students. The instantaneous nature of audience response devices allows teachers to gauge students’ understanding and tailor the day’s lessons to suit their needs. Flipped classrooms are the best integration of digital technology into education, and they are revolutionizing the way people learn.
Contributed byhttps://www.meridiaars.com/
