Is the Flipped Classroom Model the Future of Education?

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Picture this: a whitewashed classroom with students filled to the brim, rumbling with a subdued murmur. After entering you find that the teacher is not the only participant in the lesson, in fact students have actively joined in with their difficulties, seeking solutions with the teacher. That’s when it hits you that the murmur actually comprised of a collective understanding of the topic and not a stolen moment of unrest while the teacher was away. Now a question springs to your mind. When are the students learning the chapter? Simple, at home! Welcome to the flipped classroom model.

How it started?

One fine spring morning, Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann, Chemistry teachers at Woodland Park High School in Colorado came across some magic. It was a software that allowed to record PowerPoint slide-show with voice which then could be converted into a video file and distributed online. This was a quick solution for the students who missed school due to unavoidable circumstances. They started recording lessons and posting them online for their students to access those easily. Little did they know that they would become visionaries in newer methods of teaching. This is how it all started.

What is the flipped classroom?

Now we know how it began in 2007, but here is what it became. Fast forward to 2014. Clintondale High School, Michigan, United States saw test scores of the students dropping at an alarming rate. In an attempt to reverse the situation, principal Greg Green decided to try out the flipped classroom model with the help of TechSmith software. Can you imagine the results? The failure rate in the 9th grade  reduced by 33% in English, 31% in Math, 22% in Science, and 19% in Social studies.

Since you are wondering what actually happened, here is how it works:

• Students watch videos of lectures at home at their own pace.
• The homework part of working out what the student understood takes place in the classroom.

Why adopt the flipped classroom method – the advantages

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, only 59% of the students who start high school graduate 4 years later. This calls for a serious reform in education if an enhancement is expected of the recent scenario. Flipped classroom could be one of them. Here’s why:

• Different students have different learning abilities. Suppose you have 30 students in your class, 10 are good in Math, 15 are good in English, 12 are good in Science and 15 are good in History. What do you get? A mix tape of the everyday classroom. Now the students good in History may or may not be good in Math and might require a little more time in understanding Trigonometry. How then would you complete the syllabus? With flipped classroom, students get to watch the videos and understand the topics at their own pace without disrupting the time schedule for the entire syllabus.
• Now your students might face difficulty with their homework but might fall short of clarifying them due to the lesson schedule. Flipped classroom helps teachers to identify the factors that might cause a hindrance to students’ progress.
• Flipped classroom promotes student-centered learning and collaboration. It encourages students to learn concepts extensively, discuss those with their friends and engage in a healthy learning procedure with every intention to understand and reproduce the lessons effectively. A survey conducted by Center for Digital Education found that nearly 60% of the faculty that use the flipped classroom model report that more classroom interactivity, discussion and collaboration is a very significant benefit.
• Flipped classroom generates more one-on-one classroom time for students.
• Missing a lesson would not be a form of inability for the students to learn.
• Students can freely catch up on videos that they have missed or might require to re-view. They also serve as a form of revision for the students before the examination.

Watch Salman Khan, the amazing entrepreneur, educator and founder of the Khan Academy a non-profit organization revolutionizing the field of education, talk about flipping the traditional classroom.

Why it wouldn’t work – the disadvantages

The problems that pose a difficulty to effectively implementing this concept are as follows:

• The digital divide forms a huge negative. Many students do not have access to the internet or in some cases, the computer at home. How then would they understand the lessons?
• The workload on the teachers increases since they have to do an assortment of things out of which preparing a good video is a huge task. It takes up a lot time.
• Students might skip watching the video altogether. There is no way to validate that students would actually watch it step by step. The possibility of procrastination becomes a problem.
• Flipped classroom does not enable teachers to get a real feedback from students which a classroom lesson does. A traditional classroom allows immediate gauging of comprehension of the students by the teachers which a flipped classroom does not.
• Spending time plugged-in in front of a computer adds to screen time which culminates to a duration exceeding the maximum one specified.
• A careful redesigning of the whole curriculum is necessary for flipping a classroom. It might affect some students who do not identify themselves with this teaching procedure.

Despite the setbacks, if done correctly, the flipped classroom can reap unfathomable benefits. A good hands-on approach towards education is provided by the flipped classroom concept which will be welcomed any day by students. If you have anything to say about the flipped classroom concept, feel free to share your views in the comments section.