Flipping

Find out what "flipping" is and how can it be applied to maths.

What is Flipping? 

In a conventional mathematics course, lectures are often largely devoted to transmitting information. The lecturer writes and explains, the class takes notes.  The hope and expectation is that students will then work on understanding by reading over their notes and working on problems.  The "understanding" part of learning is the hard part, but typically we devote at least 75% of contact time to information transmission in the form of lectures.  In a modern mass education system, it may be that students are not well-equipped to do the hard work of understanding largely without support. 

The idea of flipping is that most of the easier work of receiving information is done by the student in unsupervised study and contact time in "lectures" becomes mainly working on understanding. 

Flipping can happen for a whole course or part of it.  It need not be more time-consuming than conventional lecturing, but it is advisable to engage with the literature on this subject first. Lecturers (and often students) know from their own experience how a conventional lecture course is supposed to operate but a flipped classroom is different and there are things one needs to know and think about before doing it.  See the Peer Instruction blog starting perhaps with "what-is-a-flipped-classroom-in-60-seconds"   and other posts on that blog.  

It might be argued that students are gaining significant understanding in a conventional lecture. All the evidence suggests otherwise.  See e.g.  Graham Gibbs’s “20 terrible reasons for lecturing”  and references therein.  Alternatively, try testing during or immediately after your own lecture to discover what students have actually understood of basic points. If your experience is anything like mine you will be surprised.