IBL is a student centered approach to teaching. IBL requires student to take the initiative, develops their curiosity, and encourages persistence and collaboration. In a flipped learning environment the direct instruction transfers from a group learning space (classroom) to an individual learning space and the group learning space becomes interactive.
A flipped classroom allows for the group learning space to become an interactive learning environment where instructors can guide their students to apply the concepts being taught and engage them in a more creative manner. In a flipped classroom the instructors and students are able to customize the learning experience. Instructors can differentiate instruction to meet various learning styles, cover more material, edit and rerecord their lectures, and assist students to synthesize and apply their knowledge through creative activities. Students can determine when and where they listen to a lecture, the pace of the lecture, and they have the power to stop, pause, and rewind as needed. Because direct instruction occurs outside the classroom this enables the instructor to become a facilitator while the students engage in an active learning environment through inquiry-based learning activities, discovery learning, and create meaningful learning experiences. I have implemented IBL using the flipped classroom method in the past and it is a technique that can be utilized regardless of modality. A flipped classroom activity that I’ve implemented before with education students is an activity that focused on the larger institution of education. Here students were able to find opportunities to foster their creative thinking abilities while considering education as they have known it and then “design” a school for the new millennium. Designing a School of the Future was an open-ended activity that allows students to go in any direction they wished. Students would listen to lectures and read the text outside of the classroom on their schedule and during class sessions would work in groups, consider each section of the text, which they read and think of it in terms of an organized system of education. Multiple technology tools were integrated into this assignment, which allowed the students to collaborate and bring up a lecture via table or smartphone when working in their groups. Upon completion of this assignment, students had a much deeper understanding of this grand enterprise we call school. During this session we will talk about the steps an instructor can take to create a flipped classroom activity by breaking down an assignment into a weekly and daily schedule, as well as cover some do's and don'ts of a flipped classroom.