Back in 2020, when most teaching (if not all) was online, I decided to flip my classroom. This is a methodology which consists in having students prepare before the class by revising the class content as homework and then, in the classroom, students ask questions, practice, and get feedback. The whole idea excited me, so I started making my own videos explaining the class content and paying attention to the class design.
Although most texts about flipped learning portrayed it as an effective methodology, I discovered it was not the case for my class. Students did not complete the preparatory activities, which hindered the development of the class and, instead of making better use of the time, it was working double. Was research all wrong about the effectiveness of flipped learning? Or was it something about the implementation?
In light of this situation, I wondered two questions:
Is flipped learning really effective?
If so, how can I make it work so it benefits the learning of my students?
Doing intensive research into flipped learning, I discovered students’ lack of preparation was the biggest shortcoming of this methodology in many contexts (Akçayır & Akçayır, 2018). This appears to be the result of teachers’ way of implementation. It appears that sudden changes in methodology might bring about students’ confusion and resistance to change, which was possibly why many didn’t follow along with the methodology. I found I could have started taking small steps, like beginning with one micro skill only and moving from there.
Something else I didn’t consider was that this methodology requires students’ high self-directedness (Lee & Choi, 2018), which was a skill most of my students lacked. What I found many practitioners suggest is closely monitoring the lowest self-directed students. This was something I had not thought of, as I only shared the videos. Although I asked students to take notes in their notebooks as a way of accountability, I found many of them were just copying from their peers’ notes, which evidently affected the depth of the learning. Another possible reason for students not completing the tasks was the way I designed the preparatory activities. I believe the videos I made were too long, usually lasting 10 mins or more. This was a time-consuming task for students, which might have made them not want to watch the videos. I learned that, according to media design principles, videos should last 5 mins long max so students can engage and focus (Brown, 2018).
Something I found interesting was that I was mostly responsible for HOW they were learning. This made me reflect on how much agency and independence I was giving them if I was in charge of the whole classroom experience? Although this is not completely bad, part of my teaching philosophy is to give students space for voice so they feel empowered and owners of the learning process.
Having read more about flipped learning allowed me to identify key aspects to improve in my practice. Some of the actions I took were:
Edpuzzle: In order to better monitor my students, I created a class on Edpuzzle. There, I uploaded my instructional videos and embedded questions to ensure they understood the content being explained. This allowed me to identify those students who hadn’t watched the lesson before the class so I could approach them and do something before the lesson started. Similarly, since students responded to questions, I looked into the questions they most often failed to respond to. This helped me identify possible questions and difficulties students faced when studying the content. Although I continued asking for evidence of their notes after watching the videos, this time I knew whose notes came directly from the video and whose didn’t.
Flipping some lessons: Another change I made was flipping certain lessons. Given the lack of time I had, I decided to flip lessons that I considered students would find less challenging. Normally, I flipped some grammar topics and vocabulary lessons when these could be easily assimilated by the students. This allowed students not to spend much time having to rewatch the videos or going over the vocabulary because it was confusing. Also, it helped with the flow of the class, as students didn’t have many questions.
Students as teachers: Another way I improved my practice was by assigning students to develop a class. Although I prepared the preparatory video, students were in charge of designing the in-classroom activities. I provided the class objective and some resources, such as websites, ideas, and the like, for students to make their lesson plan. Once they had it, they would send it to me and then, after my approval, they could execute it.
SOFLA: Something I struggled with was how to organize the in-classroom activities. Luckily, while reading, I came across this planning structure called SOFLA (Marshall & Kotska, 2020), which stands for Synchronous Online Flipped Learning Approach.This approach provides a framework consisting of 8 steps: 1) Pre-work (students’ preparatory activities); 2) Sign-in activity, an individual activity to verify students’ understanding of the content; 3) whole-group activity,an activity related to the topic involving all the class; 4) Group work, students working collaboratively on a task ending with a product; 5) Share-out, where students share with the rest of the class the final product resulting from the group work; 6) Preview & Discovery, through which I gave students a sneak peek at the next lesson, briefly explaining the next class as a way to engage students; 7) Assignment, in which I showed where the material for the next lesson would be, how they would access it and what they had to do; and finally, 8) reflection, the moment when students had to think about what they’d learned and what they still had questions about.
After implementing these changes for over a period of three months, I discovered:
Higher rate of students that prepared for the class. It appeared students started to feel more accountable for their own work. It must be said that, although the number of students doing the preparatory activities increased, there were still some who didn’t come ready for the lesson. When this happened, I made groups mixing students who had watched the video and those who hadn’t. That way those who were prepared explained the content to those who hadn’t.
Less confusion, more clarity. Students were able to understand the class structure and dynamic of the lesson, as they were provided with a consistent structure throughout the trimester.
Empowerment. Students who participated in the design of the lesson felt more empowered and responsible for their own learning and that of their peers, as they were in charge of providing feedback and facilitating the activities in the classroom.
As fun as flipped learning sounds, there were still two big challenges. The first one was regarding the time it took to prepare. I believe that starting little by little is key to achieving a point in which class material can be recycled.
The second challenge was students’ preparation. Since this is a methodology that requires students to be self-directed, it is vital to first exercise this skill before flipping the lesson, paying special attention to those who show more difficulties in terms of responsibility so as to guarantee the success of the lessons.
For those interested in learning more about flipped learning, I strongly recommend the following articles
Brown, A. F. (2018). Implementing the flipped classroom: Challenges and strategies. In Innovations in flipping the language classroom (pp. 11-21). Springer, Singapore.(Available HERE)
Marshall, H. W., & Kostka, I. (2020). Fostering Teaching Presence through the Synchronous Online Flipped Learning Approach. Tesl-Ej, 24(2), n2. (Available HERE)