Flipped Classes Part 3: Do's and Don'ts of Getting Student Buy-In
The first time I heard about the idea of flipped classes, I thought they were incredibly stupid. "But then they're not teaching you!" I said. Obviously, my perspective on this has changed. I now often reflect on why I started out with that perception, and I can almost surely point it to how it was described to me. At the time, I was an undergraduate student working in the on-campus tutoring center. The department was piloting a flipped version of one of the courses for which we get many students in the tutoring center. One of the students who was in this class was in the center one night asking for help. She described the course as the students having to teach themselves from the videos and then they just do homework during class. Looking back, I doubt this was actually the instructor's plan nor was it probably the way it was explained to students. However, this was how that particular student understood it and explained it to me. I tell you this story to illustrate ...