Why the Flipped Classroom?

 Why Flipped Classrooms Work

Despite what traditional teaching models might have you believe, education is not limited to a single person standing at the front of a room lecturing to a group of rapt pupils. Rather, education is an intrinsically social prospect, and when you facilitate learning between the individuals who have knowledge and those who need it, it can create an environment of rapid knowledge growth.

This is why schools have begun embracing methodologies to encourage knowledge sharing, both in-classroom and remote. The ability to use technology to share knowledge and co-learn between people across geographies has shown significant impact on education, as has the ability for students to learn on their own, at their own pace. Flexible classrooms allow students to view lectures and perform solo learning at home, and then meet in the classroom for group activities and interpersonal learning. The addition of remote learning allows students to join in these collaborative exercises from anywhere, extending the size of the classroom and the range of perspectives.

These benefits are backed up by research, with studies reporting that using a flipped classroom approach “increased [the] levels of student achievement, interest and engagement” (Herreid & Schiller, 2013). This was demonstrated in a major study of science education, which found that students in flipped classrooms achieved higher test scores and greater overall classroom success than comparable students in traditional education classes (Ruddick, 2012).