Barbi Honeycutt, PhD of NC State University recently published a piece on flipped learning that we thought our readers might appreciate. As an instructor, she’s experienced many of the challenges of flipping her classes and distills tips down to five key points:
- Find flippable moments – resist the temptation to try and flip everything in your course, find the right flippable moments and focus on making those engaging and effective
- Make small changes – examine a single lesson to start beginning with your targeted learning outcomes. Start with a simple flipped exercise to get going – “think, pair, share”. Flipping doesn’t have to be an all or none proposition, tweaking a lecture to include a flippable moment is a way to get started.
- Build margins into the lesson plan – find and create ample white space in lessons, if you’re flipping for the first time plan for the activity to take 2-3x as long as it would vs. a traditional lecture. Planning to spend the extra time reduces stress for instructors as you won’t feel that you’re behind as soon as you get into your flipped activity.
- Rethink how your time is defined – it will take time to plan activities for a flipped classroom, that’s a given, but note that during the flipped part of your class session you’ll be walking around, talking to students and supporting their exploration. As a result, you don’t need to prepare to be spending that time lecturing.
- Do less, accomplish more – Don’t redesign every lesson, or try to use a flipped approach for every class session every day. Find the flipping strategies that work for you and align with your teaching style and flip where needed for maximum impact, not at all points where it’s possible to do so.
The full article, just a few minutes read, is linked below.
