I was recently asked by a colleague if I knew of a useful article or two on flipped classrooms – what they are, what they aren’t, and when did they start. I was not looking for any simple advocacy or rejection posts, but explainers that can allow other people to understand the subject and make up their own mind on the value of flipping.
While I had a few in mind, I put out a bleg on Google+ and got some great responses from Laura Gibbs, George Station, and Bryan Alexander. Once mentioned, Robert Talbert and Michelle Pacansky-Brock jumped into the conversation with additional material. It seemed like a useful exercise to compile the results and share a list here at e-Literate. This list is not meant to be comprehensive, but a top level of the articles that I have found useful.
- ELI’s “7 Things You Should Know About … Flipped Classrooms”: This 2-page PDF from 2012 might be the best first article on the subject. I like the explanatory tone and basic questions (what is it, how does it work, who’s doing it, why is it significant, what are the downsides, where is it going, what are the implications for teaching and learning).
- UT Austin Center for Teaching’s “What is the Flipped Classroom?”: This web page is notable for a simple but relative effective one minute video as well as some useful graphics.
- Jackie Gerstein’s “A Little More on the Flipped Classroom”: This blog post includes a list of articles (current as of spring 2013 for additional reading. In addition, Jackie has a series of useful posts tagged as ‘flipped classroom’.
- Robert Talbert’s “Inverted Classroom”: This 2-page article from 2012 for Grand Valley State University’s ScholarWorks includes some historical context as well as concise description of benefits and pitfalls. Robert also has a series of posts at the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Casting Out Nines blog describing his personal experience flipping a class. This post addresses the need for a clear definition.
- Michelle Pacansky-Brock’s Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies: The 16-page introduction in this 2012 book gives some history and context for flipped classrooms. Don’t tell Michelle, but you can read the entire introduction on Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature. Michelle also has a Flip Your Class web site that includes videos that help capture the concept in action.
- Inside Higher Ed’s “Still in Favor of the Flip”: This article from fall 2013 captures viewpoints of people across the spectrum – from advocates of flipping to neutral to opponents of flipping.
- Ian Bogost’s “The Condensed Classroom”: This summer 2013 article in The Atlantic gives a serious critique of the concept of flipping.
There are other useful article out there, but this list is a good starting place for balanced, non-hyped descriptions of the flipped classroom concept.1 Let me know in the comments if there are others to include in this list.
- I did not include any directly commercial sites or articles in the list above. Michelle’s book was included as the introduction is freely available. [↩]
Hi Phil,
You should consider adding Tutored Video Instruction (TVI) to your list of “flipped classroom” references. It was developed back in the early seventies by J.F. Gibbons, who was then dean of Stanford’s School of Engineering.
John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid discuss TVI at length in their classic book The Social Life of Information (see pages 221 – 223).
You can find an extended quote from this book on TVI at:
John Seely Brown on Tutored Video Instruction
http://innovationmemes.blogspot.com/2014/02/john-seely-brown-on-tutored-video.html
Cheers,
Fred
On second thought, you may want to have a list of references to models that are similar to the “flipped classroom” in some ways, but different in other very important ways.
Tutored Video Instruction (TVI) is similar to the flipped classroom in that students can view videos of the lecture instead of seeing the lecture live. However, in the “flipped classroom” students view the lectures on their own, but in TVI they view the lectures as a study group with one student serving as the study group facilitator (tutor).
Also, in the case of TVI, the time spent in the study group IS considered a “formal learning experience” so it CAN be counted toward the “seat time” used to calculate credit hours.
As I understand the “flipped classroom” idea, when students spend time watching the lecture videos on their own before class, it is NOT considered a part of the oh so important “formal learning experience.”
Fred – thanks for the ideas. While it’s not true for all flipped classrooms, there are some programs designed (and approved at least tacitly by accreditation) where the video / content delivery is counted towards “seat time”. This is more an artifact of designing a blended course (part online, part f2f) than the specifics of flipping (content / video online, discussion f2f).
Hi Phil,
Thanks for the update. My info on the flipped classroom and what counts as “seat time” is far from comprehensive and not up-to-date.
It would be nice to have some data on how various institutions are counting seat time with regard to alternative modes of teaching (e.g. flipped classrooms, blended learning, TVI, etc.). And, perhaps more importantly, the extent to which various institutions are finding acceptable alternatives to seat time.
Cheers,
Fred