What is Flipped Classroom?

“It is different for different people. I personally produce videos on my iPad with the app called Explain Everything. What would have been a lecture during class is now homework. The students do not need me to takes notes. Now in class, they can work with each other on problems that used to be homework; they can ask specific questions about individual problems or general questions on the material and I can pull everyone together if there is something from the material they are lacking,” math teacher Steven Karr. “As I get more proficient with making the videos, we can get into different ways of working with material. We can work in some differentiation in terms of assignments. Each individual student needs different things. Some may need help with the skills, others with the application of those skills through working with problems. People can be working on slightly different things at the same time.”

What demand does this classroom style put on you?

“Producing this kind of class is much more work for me and way out of my comfort zone. I can look at a section and have an idea of what I need to cover in terms of a lecture, that is easy, but making that lecture into a video that students will be able to follow at home is another story,” Karr said. “The videos take more thinking and paring down of the material. I need to realize that I do not need to hit every type of problem because the students will be exposed to those in class.”

What are other difficulties in your class this year?

“Having new books and two different courses to work with to create videos for is very time consuming. Each video I make takes one to two hours to produce, but I try to have the videos only last 15 to 20 minutes for the students. However, that does not always work out,” Karr said. “Pre-calculus had to watch a video that was 44 minutes long.”

What is teh goal of having a flipped class?

“Ultimately, after doing research into this type of classroom style and going to different classes in this style, I wanted to see for myself if this makes a difference in student achievement. Does this make students more comfortable with math classes? This year is a sort of test year, to see if it helped or if it just didn’t work effectively,” Karr said. “I hope that it works and to modify it for the next year. My goal as a teacher is to try to complete what is most beneficial for students and I am willing to give this a try. So far, students seem less stressed and more related to the material. Not as many people have dropped the classes as they have in past years.”