Introduction to the Flipped Classroom

Abstract

It is Monday morning, bright and early, as Laura rushes from the bus stop to the massive event centre, where her first-year engineering workshop is being held. It is the second week of the course and she knows that she is falling behind a bit because she did not watch the recommended pre-learning podcast for this workshop that, she seems to recall, is something to do with setting your learning goals. She is still a bit puzzled because this course is not like any of her other courses in first-year engineering. The professor called it a flipped classroom and although she is not exactly sure what that means, she knows that there are not any lectures, which kind of irritates her a bit. The purpose of beginning our book “Flipped Classroom Practice and Practices” with this example is that it provides us with one of the most audacious, yet promising implementation of the flipped classroom approach that we are aware of. Successfully integrating fundamental disciplinary knowledge with active, authentic practice at such large scales challenges some of our most dearly held beliefs about learning in higher education (i.e. the lower the student/staff ratio the better) and also shines a light on a range of issues that are systematic to the culture and organisational structure of today’s universities. These issues must be resolved if we are to successfully adapt to the social and technological changes we currently face. And this is why we flipped our classroom.