A Unique Solution to the Problems of Flipped Classrooms

 

A Unique Solution to the Problems of Flipped Classrooms

              Flipping a classroom is essentially switching around what the students would normally do at home and what they do in class with the teacher. Rather than completing projects and practice problems at home, and listening to the teacher lecture in class, students watch video instructions at home on their computers (or do readings), and complete group projects and work through practice problems in the classroom with the teacher. Before teachers implement this method, there are two main steps they should take first. First, I think the advice of a PBS NewsHour article is very important to consider: Teachers must think through what the problem is in their classroom. Perhaps the flipped classroom model is not for them. Just because others are flipping their classrooms and it sounds new and innovative, doesn’t mean it will be the right fit for you and your classroom (What a "Flipped" Classroom Looks Like, 2013). As Hertz (2012) put it, “As long as learning remains the focus, and as long as educators are constantly reflecting” (para. 9), the switch can be beneficial. Secondly, if you decide that flipping your classroom is right for your situation, you must then discuss the process and give guidance to your students before starting (Lo & Hew, 2017). While technology access of course is a prerequisite, I do not personally feel like this is so much of an issue today. So, more important is to make sure your students and their parents will know what this learning process will look like, what will be expected of them at home, what to do in case of technology failures, and also how their new classroom structure will look. Once you have this groundwork laid, it is time to address the next hurdle: The challenges that will face you as a teacher, and the challenges that will face your students.

              First, let’s address the challenges you will face as a teacher implementing the flipped classroom. First, of course, is the amount of time that will be required of you to prepare the instructional videos that students will be watching at home now. While some might argue that you could just pull instructional videos that already exist from the internet, Lo and Hew (2017) point out that sometimes the videos that are already available don’t really match the content exactly the way you need them to. This means that you will have to find a way to carve time out of your busy schedule to create (or find) just the right content that your students can learn at home. Then you run the risk of students not even completing the work assigned to them outside of class. With just having instructional videos assigned as “homework,” it’s not hard to see why “some of them skipped the pre-class activities and came unprepared to the class.” (Lo & Hew, 2017, para. 34).

              As far as the threats to the students themselves, it should be considered if it is really fair to assign so much work outside of school hours. This perhaps is an argument against homework in general, but I think it is important to consider. No adult is expected to go home after their full day of contract hours and continue doing work for their company. Should we expect children (especially in the younger grades, which I teach) to spend so much of their evenings watching lectures and studying just to be ready for their next day in class? Secondly, teachers should consider the impersonal quality of videos (Lo & Hew, 2017). Video lectures often are not able to cover content quite as thoroughly as a teacher could, and there is no way for the students to interrupt with their questions. Lastly, there is the problem of the students missing out on the peer collaboration throughout the whole process of the learning (such as doing their assigned readings or lecture study together in groups and discussing together as they go).

              I believe that I can solve all these problems with one unique solution: Flipping your classroom… within your classroom. What would this look like? Rather than expecting students to go home and complete the instructional videos at home in their free time, teachers could incorporate this right into the school day by replacing their front-of-the-class whole group instruction with online video instruction or readings. This would allow students to gain the benefit of the instructional video model—getting to work at their own pace, pause the video as needed without holding the rest of the class up, etc.—while solving the problems that would otherwise plague the practice. Teachers wouldn’t have to worry about students not completing the instruction at home, and students wouldn’t have to worry about running into technical difficulties or not having technology on hand at home. They wouldn’t have to worry about having more to do at home after their long day at school, and they would have their teacher and their peers right their if they had questions about the instructional videos. While teachers would still have to figure out when to find or produce the instructional videos, I think this could be overcome by following Lo and Hew’s (2017) advice to “start small and proceed at a reasonable pace” (para. 61). Teachers could then focus on guiding the group projects and practice problems (Hertz, 2012) while students work on the instructional videos at their own pace right in the classroom. Perhaps the best thing to call this is flipped instruction within the classroom.

             

References

Hertz, M. (2012, July 10). The Flipped Classroom: Pro and Con. [Web log post]. Retrieved April 23, 2018 from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/flipped-classroom-pro-and-con-mary-beth-hertz

Lo, C. & Hew, K (2017, January 7)  A critical review of flipped classroom challenges in K-12 education: possible solutions and recommendations for future research. Retrieved from https://telrp.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41039-016-0044-2

PBS NewsHour, (2013, December 1) What a "Flipped" Classroom Looks Like. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/G_p63W_2F_4