The flipped classroom is something I had been hearing about for years before the pandemic, but it wasn’t until 2020 that it became a reality. During the height of lockdowns, I was teaching all my courses over Zoom and recording them for students who couldn’t attend or missed a class. I ended up with a massive bank of recorded lecture content, and decided this was the ideal opportunity to try a flipped classroom. I spent hours learning iMovie and editing my 80 minute lectures down to 20-40 minutes. I was dismayed to discover that my first lecture video took about 12 hours to edit, putting in 3-4 hours per day over several days. It was brutal. I tried again, and my second video took eight hours. The next took six. I got faster and faster and less perfectionist as I went. I also got better and more efficient at using the editing tools. By the end of it, I was editing a lecture video in two hours. Now having created an entire term’s worth of lecture videos, I could finally flip my classroom.

Source: https://teaching.washington.edu/topics/engaging-students-in-learning/flipping-the-classroom/

Most of my courses meet twice a week, so I had already developed a format where I do my lecture-style “content delivery” class on Tuesdays, then assign an online discussion forum on Moodle to be completed before class on Thursdays. By assigning a video version of my Tuesday lecture, I was able to devote all of Tuesday’s class time to discussion, questions, and in-class activities related to the lecture.

The most incredible thing about this system is that it now enables me to spend the entirety of my class contact time facilitating live, verbal discussion based on the students’ forum posts and questions about the lecture videos. They have already pre-loaded their thoughts to the forum before class and thus have plenty of ideas to contribute to the discussion. This strategy also allows me to read through the forum responses before class and make note of particularly interesting points made by various students, in case I need to step in when the discussion lulls or even change the course of the conversation entirely.

Another benefit of this method is that I can ensure that everyone’s ideas are heard and we end up with a much more thorough and democratic sharing of ideas. If someone does not speak up, I may draw them into the conversation by remarking on a point I found interesting in their forum post. I have found these discussions to be stimulating, and we never run out of material because the forum posts offer so much potential for different avenues to explore. This technique has become a pillar of my classroom management style, facilitating greater engagement and participation and bringing me closer to my philosophy of student-centered learning.

Freeing up the contact time that I would normally spend on content delivery and replacing it with more interaction is something I would like to achieve in other courses. So far, I have only flipped one course, largely because of the time commitment required to edit the lecture videos. That said, I continue to record all my classes and build my archive of lecture footage. Maybe someday I’ll be able to use some professional development time to sit down and put in the extra hours required to flip another course!