Implementing the Flip: Adding the Flipped Classroom Approach Into Your Teaching Toolkit

Overview

The flipped classroom approach is an instructional strategy that “flips” the traditional lecture and homework elements of a course (Educause, 2012). This pedagogical model turns passive learning, traditional lecture, and quizzing formats, into active learning. To do this, instructors typically assign recorded video lectures or chapter readings as homework. Then, they reserve in-class time for active learning exercises and direct interaction with students. The goal of this interactive, education session is to describe the flipped approach, demonstrate the use of this pedagogical strategy, and then help participants implement flipped strategies into their own courses. 

Why Make the Flip?

So why should instructors flip their classrooms? The Coursera Flipped Classroom Field Guide(2019) identifies the following benefits to both students and instructors: 

• improved educational outcomes

• the efficiency/efficacy of recorded lectures, the ability to make lectures more interactive

• more opportunities to collect and utilize data and analytics

• the ability to offer more personalized learning

• the ability to facilitate mastery learning

The main benefit of the flipped approach is to move traditional, less-engaged activities, such as in-class lectures, outside of class. Students would gain the content ahead of time. This then allows the instructor to facilitate a more engaging lesson via activities such as discussions, problem-solving prompts, and critical thinking exercises as part of the in-class activities. In a traditional lecture classroom, students are focused on writing notes from the instructor or PowerPoint instead of reflecting on what the content means (Educause, 2012). Often times they miss significant points because they focus on writing as much as they can before the PowerPoint slide changes to the next. However, in the flipped approach, they are able to pause and rewind videos, or refer back to chapter content when completing the at-home portion of the approach. 

Bergmann and Sams (2012) wrote in their book, Flip your classroom: Reach every student in every class every day(2012), some reasons why teachers should consider flipping (p.20-33):

• Flipping speaks the language of today’s students.

• Flipping helps busy students.

• Flipping helps struggling students.

• Flipping helps students of all abilities to excel.

• Flipping allows students to pause and rewind their teachers.

• Flipping increases student-teacher interaction.

• Flipping allows teachers to know their students better.

• Flipping increases student-student interaction.

• Flipping allows for real differentiation.

• Flipping changes classroom management.

• Flipping changes the way we talk to parents.

• Flipping educates parents.

• Flipping makes your class transparent.

• Flipping is a great technique for absent teachers.

• Flipping can lead to the flipped mastery program.

• Conversely, the book also cites 5 “bad reasons for flipping your classroom” (p.21):

• Because some guys who got a book published told you to.

• Because you think it will create a 21st-century classroom.

• Because you think you will become cutting edge.

• Because you think flipping your classroom exempts you from being a good teacher.

• Because you think it will make your job easier.

This session involves and attracts educators who may be interested in creative strategies or alternate methods to engage students in their course material. Such a contribution is not likely to be available elsewhere at the conference due to the interactive nature of the work session. Instead of a session that focuses solely on refereed research, this special education session will deliver new content and then facilitate a break-out session with attendees. 

Applying the Flipped Approach into a 400-Level Advertising Production Course

The example is from a 400-level advertising production course at a higher educational institution. This course applies concepts of design, creative strategy, and message development to the creation of advertising in a variety of mediums. The course focuses on the development of consumer, public service, and public relations advertising campaigns. Upon completion of this course, students are able to:

• Demonstrate advanced knowledge of design principles and software. 

• Understand specific areas of advertising, including consumer, public service, and public relations advertising.

• Produce advertising campaigns that effectively integrate copy and design.

• Develop an understanding of pre-press production. 

• Develop and present an advertising portfolio.

Prior to each face-to-face session, students gained exposure to new concepts and material by watching lecture videos, doing guided readings, and/or completing the required activities online. Then, during the course sessions, students actively engaged in course material via brief chapter reviews and in-class activities.  

For example, this course uses the textbook, Advertising Creative: Strategy, Copy, Design, 5th ed., by Altstiel, Grow, and Jennings. Chapter six of the text is titled, Concepts and Design. Concepting is the creative process of coming up with concepts for an ad campaign. Prior to coming to class, students were required to read the chapter and take a brief five questions online quiz. Questions are taken directly from the reading material and the time restriction on the quiz is five minutes. After ingesting and reflecting on the content outside of class, the next in-class period includes a brief PowerPoint review of the material from chapter six and an in-class activity titled, Spring Break in Antarctica.

This activity was a wonderful idea provided in the instructor materials that coincided with the text from the publisher. In this activity, the entire class role-plays as an ad agency that must come up with a concept to promote Antarctica as a spring break destination. During step one, students would shout out words they associated with spring break and the instructor made a column of the words on the whiteboard. Then they did the same thing for Antarctica. Next, as a group, they started connecting words from the columns. 

In step 2, students were placed in pairs. Each team had 20 minutes to come up with three concepts to promote Antarctica as a college spring break destination using the words on the board as inspiration. Then, each team developed a headline for each idea. These are rough concepts only. However, a concept could lead to a social media campaign, TV commercial, direct mailer, or any number of creative executions. 

This exercise led to a great discussion on word association and how to use key terms to generate concepts for an ad campaign. Students were able to think outside the box to develop their campaign slogans. By actively engaging in the content, students were able to apply what they read from the chapter prior to coming to class in a real-world simulation. 

Conclusion

The flipped approach is a great way to increase engagement and facilitate active learning in the classroom. In this mode of instruction, students are expected to identify new concepts, topics, and materials before coming to class via lecture videos, chapter readings, and/or other required activities. For this approach to work, emphasis is placed on the students to ingest the material ahead of time and come prepared to apply the content in the form of in-class activity and/or discussion. Class time is devoted to collaborative work, with peers and the instructor. Lectures, if given, should be limited in quantity and more in the form of review. Lastly, it’s important to generate specific questions to be addressed in class to help students struggling with the course content. 

In the flipped approach, students should not be expected to “teach themselves” all of the content. The instructor provides a self-guided structure while facilitating an active learning environment in the classroom. Also, students should not be expected to obtain mastery learning of new content before coming to class. Instead, they are expected to gain a basic understanding of the material. If students are struggling with the approach, encourage them to collaborate with their peers, and generate targeted questions that either they or the professor can answer during the class.

Level of Participation

This session is structured more like a workshop with audience members being provided time to develop their own rough draft, step-by-step guide to implementing a flipped lesson. Following the introduction, the presenter will ask seven guided questions for each step of the process. At the completion of the session, each attendee should have the beginning of a flipped approach plan to implement into a course of their choosing.

Session Goals:

Individuals attending this presentation will develop their own step-by-step guide for implementing a flipped lesson. Using Talbert’s (2017) framework for designing the flipped approach, participants will go through the following 7-step process:

1. Define a brief, but comprehensive list of learning objects for a lesson

2. Remix the learning objectives to appear in order of cognitive complexity

3. Create a rough design of a group activity for students to complete

4. Revise and divide the objective list into basic and advanced objectives

5. Finish the design of the group project

6. Design an individual activity

7. Design any post-group activities