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It was the early days of YouTube (then two-years old), and it was getting cheap and easy to make and post videos, so the two teachers—Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams—proposed shifting lectures to videos students would watch at home, and asking students to come to class prepared to problem solve with their peers. It became know as the flipped classroom—a modern, video-based version of a model pioneered by a handful of higher ed professors during the 1990s.
A few years later, the concept lit up like rocket fuel thanks in part to the catchy name, along with fast-growing home internet connectivity and a shout-out in Sal Khan’s popular TED Talk. Or maybe it stemmed from the fact that anyone could get the gist of the teaching idea in the time it takes to rattle off a sound bite. “It’s a simple model,” says Bergmann. “Simple designs work well, and simplicity makes things happen.”
Whatever the cause, it was a hit with teachers everywhere. By 2008 it had its own conference, FlipCon (which closed domestically, but not internationally, in 2016). A New York Times headline went so far as to call it a “Death Knell for the Lecture,” while other mainstream media outlets scrambled to cover the craze. Detractors predictably sprang up to call it an online video fad. And Bergmann, Sams and Khan turned it into a bonafide career path.
What was less certain then was that flipped would still be going strong a decade after those first bite-sized chemistry lectures appeared online, and that it would spawn a global movement, picking up devotees in dozens of countries around the world, or that edtech companies from EDpuzzle to PlayPosit and Schoology would still be making money off it long after that first news cycle came and went.
Of course, the flipped movement still has its critics. It can mean more work for students and teachers alike, it disadvantages students without strong home internet access and it’s all too easy for teachers to get it wrong, isolating students even further. “A kid who does not do their homework normally will not watch the lectures at home even if you hold them accountable,” educator Chris Aviles has written in a screed against the model’s hype.
But notably, a cohesive opposition movement has failed to materialize, in part because research on its impact in the classroom has generally been positive (or at least neutral). Perhaps also because as flipped learning has evolved, it has adopted much more of an open-ended definition. It has become hard to pin down as it finally begins to shake off the stigma of an online video fad.
“When you ask people what the flipped classroom is, they automatically go to the videos,” says Ryan Hull, a Kansas middle school teacher who has been flipping his social studies classes for the past six years. “I know that making a video is probably the most intimidating part for most people. But you’ll find the vast majority of my time now is dedicated to figuring out what in the world I’m going to do in a class period where I used to talk for 35 minutes.”
The promise of more time for active learning is key to the flipped appeal, its fans say. Equally important, the approach offers a readymade solution to a universal problem: In the information age, how do you teach students to think for themselves when so many answers are just a Google search away?
“We feel that everything is changing,” says Sigrún Svafa Ólafsdóttir, a Danish-language teacher in Iceland who has traveled across Europe as a flipped-learning trainer. “I could be babbling about something trying to convince you to listen to me, but if you need this information you could just look it up. We have to do something about that, and it’s really a global issue.”
Flipped OS
Early this decade there was perhaps no one person—not even Bergmann or Sams—more associated with flipping the classroom than Sal Khan, due in no small part to the more than 140 million views his Khan Academy videos had racked up by 2012. But to hear Khan tell it, that association was little more than a coincidence of timing. Namely, his videos were approaching critical mass just around the same time as flipped learning was coming into its own...
It’s Not About Video—Until It Is
Aaron Sams was one of the original co-founders of the modern flipped-learning movement, and, like Bergmann, he too has crisscrossed the globe giving talks and training teachers. Recently though, he’s taken a step back to pursue a PhD in STEM instruction, and he has begun to explore more general questions of what makes good teaching (as opposed to good flipped teaching).
“I used to talk a lot about the fact that flipping is not about the video, it’s about what you do with your classroom time,” explains Sams. “But the more I think about it, good teaching is about what you do with the classroom time.” Flipping, he says, is a tool to help move the classroom toward active learning, and a better use of face-to-face time. “So I would probably take a few steps back from what I said a few years ago—that it’s not about the video—and say, I think it kind of is.”
Khan suggests that while video-based instruction is inferior to human interaction, it still holds value as part of what he calls “micro-explanation,” whereby students can turn to their teacher’s lectures (or, say, Khan Academy videos) to reinforce concepts during the active-learning process, at the exact moment they’re ready to learn them.
Lecture still exists in a flipped model, but the way professors use it is far different. Once lectures are turned into a series of modular videos, students can consume them as needed. Ryan Hull, the middle school teacher in Kansas, practices what he calls the “in-flip,” where students watch videos in class, “so that when they have questions, I’m here.”
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Source: EdSurge
