What is Flipped learning, and when is it effective?

Teaching and learning methodologies have evolved to a greater extent, coping with the requirements of new generation kids. With the evolution of the internet and technology, student classrooms make learning more engaging and outcome-based. Flipped learning is an effective teaching methodology where instructors teach learners via assignments and homework-based structure. Especially in these last two years of the covid-19 pandemic, flipped classrooms have been adopted widely by many teaching institutions. With this new innovative strategy, learners can understand the real-life implementation of topics and study complex topics with greater depth.

What is Flipped Learning?

Flipped learning is becoming more & more popular among higher and secondary education students. Students learning from flipped classrooms require to complete/attend online classes, lectures, courses as homework before attending in-person classes.

After finishing homework, students later engage their class time in discussions, project building, questioning, problem-solving, deep thinking, presentation, or group teaching. This way, flipped teaching method flips the traditional classroom models’ working and implementation, resulting in engaged and active learning of students.

What are the Four Pillars of Flipped Learning

Just like there are teaching guidelines for teachers of traditional classes, for successful flipped classrooms, teachers have to incorporate four pillars of F.L.I.P (Flexible Environment, Learning Culture, Intentional Content, Professional Educator) in their teaching practice.

Flexible Environment

Teachers create a flexible learning environment where students can decide when and where to learn. Moreover, teachers implementing flipped classes are adaptable with their expectations of student learning and assignment submission dates.

Learning Culture

In traditional lecture-based classes, the central focus revolves around the primary source of information, i.e., the lecturer. However, Flipped teaching actively changes the information gathering to a learner-centered approach.

So, students have to dedicate their in-class time exploring more depth into the topics they’ve learned via digital lectures, courses, etc. Doing so results in active involvement in students’ knowledge building, which is extremely valuable.

Intentional Content

The focus of Flipped learning is to provide students with a conceptual understanding of the academic topics. Flipped Learning Educators must think of new ways to use this learning model for enhancing the abstract experience of the topics.

And to procedural fluency of the topics, educators must know what they should teach and what students should learn on their own. To maximize classroom effectiveness, educators use intentional content that promotes active learning.

Professional Educator

This is the most essential pillar of the Flipped learning model. The Educating authority must be professional and experienced in teaching. The role of a professional educator is extremely critical in flipped learning than in a traditional classroom.

A good educator can deliver correct feedback, observe their students, and positively assess their work.

Flipped teaching educators are insightful at the same time accept constructive criticism. Also, educators must tolerate controlled chaos in the classrooms due to the collaborative and discussing nature of the flipped classes.

Even though the involvement of educators in flipped learning is less, they’re the ones coordinating the flipped classes.

Is Flipped Learning Really Effective?

So the short answer to this question is yes! There are factual reports that support the implementation of flipped classrooms than traditional classes. Active learning promotes students in building their own knowledge base by rewiring existing neural networks, allowing kids to gain a more profound understanding. According to a study, students from flipped classrooms performed academically better than students enrolled in traditional classrooms.

Students learning in flipped classes have enhanced higher-order-thinking skills. With this learning style, students can increase their potential of learning academic and professional proficiencies.

Enhancing time management, intrapersonal, and interpersonal skills are soft skills students master over time in flipped classes.

When Flipped Learning is Most Effective?

Generally, flipped classes are more effective than traditional classes in the majority of the subjects. For the science, technology, language disciplines, these courses have shown tremendous student benefit. So, Flipped teaching is most effective when implemented for skill-based curricula.

However, when implementing flipped classes in STEM-based courses, student gains were higher than lecture-based students by significant margins.

Apart from particular academic implementation, the effectiveness of flipped classes also varies based on topographical locality. Flipped classrooms implemented in Mid-East and Asian countries are proven to be more effective than the ones implemented in European, North American, or Australian countries.

So, flipped learning work wonders where geographically, learning is strictly kept in lecture format without student engagement.

Are Students Engaged in Flipped Classrooms

Compared to traditional lecture-based classrooms, flipped classes give students the opportunity to engage themselves more in the activities related to the course materials. However, in factual reports, the data is more significant by a tiny edge.

So flipped learning does not instantly boost student satisfaction or course evaluation. However, in Asian and European countries, many students reported course fulfillment with flipped learning.

How Do Students Benefit from Flipped Learning?

Autonomous Learning

Students don’t need to depend on teachers/educators to understand the flip classroom models. With the help of digital learning resources, students can learn academic subjects independently.

Learners become Leaders

While learning syllabus via digital resources, students do group discussions, presentations, teach peers. These activities enhance the self-esteem of children and help them gain confidence.

In flipped classrooms, students master various skills while building projects, reports, and discussions. This way, students learn and teach each other under the guidance of educators.

Increases Conceptual Understanding

Students enrolled in flipped classes develop learning attitudes over time. So, whatever they learn gets registered in their conceptual/long-term memory.

Asynchronous Learning

In the flipped classroom, students learn with faculty and peers asynchronously. They can rewind or fast-forward the video lecture to gain additional information or apply what they have learned. Students can view lectures online or use video conferencing for a more personalized learning experience.

A flipped classroom model combines asynchronous and synchronous learning. In some cases, a flipped video can become part of the regular class syllabus. This trend is proving to be effective and promising. So, if you want to implement it in your school, make sure you follow the above-mentioned guidelines to make it a success.