In his 2011 TED video, Sal Khan describes a classroom of the future wherein students and instructors collaborate on more difficult and intriguing problems. How does he propose we accomplish this? By flipping the classroom, of course.

What’s a flipped classroom?

The flipped classroom is so-called, because the “lesson” and the “practice” are flipped. For example, a teacher assigns a video lecture for homework  — ostensibly one of Sal’s videos. The student watches the lecture at home, then reports to the classroom ready to tackle the tough stuff — the assignments. This allows students to engage in more challenging problems under the guidance of the content expert.

What are the benefits?

About 5 seasons ago, I flipped my Stats class — both at Sayre and at Elmira College (where I was a freelance adjunct). Using the flipped classroom had enabled me to make extensive use of Minitab in the computer lab. Had the students not previewed the content with the curated video content, this would not have been possible. Given the “STEM” nature of students’ futures, Minitab use will provide a leg up whether entering college or the workforce.

Unfortunately, many schools are not able to invest in expensive software that will only be utilized by the small proportion of students in the right tail of the bell curve.

At any rate, another advantage to the flipped classroom is that students spend more time on the task of problem-solving. In classical instructional pedagogy, most of the students’ time is spent being lectured to. Very little real-world problem solving gets done in the classroom. The instructor doesn’t know until it’s too late whether learning has occurred (i.e., via failed assessments).

The catch…

There is a caveat. Sal Khan and I (and other advocates of the flipped classroom) assume that students all want to learn and will invest the time in the designated preview activities. Some public schools (unwittingly) train students not do anything that does not count. What questions makes teachers cringe? “Are you collecting this?” “Is this going in the gradebook?” “Do we need our notebooks?“

Getting started

In the beginning, I had to “pay students” to consume the Stats preview content. How was this accomplished? I call them Quick Quizzes, but they’re just short frequent assessments designed for student accountability. When students know they are being quizzed regularly on the content, they are “forced” (at first) to plug in. Then it becomes second nature.

This is essential, because we all know that life doesn’t offer rewards for merely showing up. Successful people have learned how to internalize learned content and work without oversight.

Other Caveats

The flipped classroom assumes that students want to learn, that they want to do assignments, and that they go to a school that enforces law and order. Even “good” students struggle to learn in organizations where bad actors are allowed to run rampant. Before teachers attempt to flip their classrooms, they need to have a few policy pillars in place.

Without good classroom management, implementing a flipped classroom is challenging. In fact, there are probably many district where the students may even prefer the old school didactic learning platform.

Educators: Have you experimented with the flipped classroom?