Digital Pedagogy - A Guide for Librarians, Faculty, and Students

What is a Flipped Classroom?  

According to Educause’s “7 Things you should know about flipped classrooms,” a flipped classroom is a pedagogical model where typical lecture and homework elements are reversed. Short videos, operating as a lecture component, are viewed outside the classroom or session, while hands-on, active learning activities are done within the classroom.

• Lectures are typically created by the instructor, but can also be chosen from a repository.
• There are currently many sources of video lectures available online, that access to this type of material is becoming ubiquitous.
• Flipped classrooms draw on such concepts as active learning, student engagement, hybrid course design, and course podcasting.
• The value of flipped classrooms comes from the re-purposing of class time: workshop time is turned into a space  where students can inquire about lecture content, test their skills in applying knowledge, and interact with one another in hands-on activities.Instructors function as coaches or advisors, encouraging students in individual inquiry and collaborative effort.

The Flipped Classroom is also known by the following terms:

• The inverted classroom
• Hybrid learning
• Blended learning

According to Arnold-Garza in her article “The Flipped Classroom Teaching Model and its Use for Information Literacy Instruction,” the Flipped Classroom has the following defining concepts:

• It uses active learning techniques and new technologies to engage students
• It moves the lecture outside of the classroom (the author also emphasizes that the lecture format has varied and evolved from slides, audio, podcasts, narrated presentations, to video casts and other multimedia content)
• It moves practical applications of what is learned into the classroom

In "Shifting the Instructional Paradigm," Allen presents four pillars of the Flipped Classroom. They are as follows:

1. In class learning is shifted to active learning, and  the instructor allows students greater control to choose what they want to learn and when.
2. The instructor moves from being the expert to the facilitator. A move from the “sage on the stage” to “a guide on the side.”
3. Intentional content and active learning shift the focus of in-class time on learner centered pedagogy.
4. the lecture based classroom is conceded for collaborative learning space, and personalizes and facilitates instruction and interaction. 

How does a Flipped Classroom Work?

According to Educause’s guide, Flipped Classrooms are pragmatic. There is no predetermined formula for structure, and the term is widely used to describe almost any class structure that provides pre-recorded lectures that are followed by in-class exercises. Typically, lectures are listened to by students outside of class time, and may be accompanied by quizzes in order to test for comprehension, which provides for the benefit of immediate feedback for the instructor in the ways of students’ comprehension. Because materials are pre-recorded lectures, this provides for the additional benefit of allowing the student to go back over points made and key take-aways from a particular lesson.The instructor, rather than acting as a “sage on the stage,” can instead:

• suggest various approaches
• clarifies content
• monitors progress

Class time is used for problem solving in groups, and applying acquired knowledge. According to Madden and Martinez, this pre-recorded set-up allows students:

• to learn at their own pace
• gives faculty an opportunity to identify areas of difficulty
• allows for individual coaching

According to Arnold-Gaza, in "The Flipped Classroom Teaching Model and Its Use for Information Literacy Instruction," there are is no one approach to the flipped classroom, but instead, countless paths to teaching as the learning goals and objectives shape which features of the flipped classroom are used.