Do 'flipped classrooms' get a pass or fail?
Tamara Baluja
Published
Okanagan Mission Secondary School in Kelowna, B.C., is among the early Canadian adopters of the flipped classroom – a model where students switch around what’s traditionally covered at school and what’s assigned for kids to do at home. Instead of lectures in class and homework after school, these students are watching lectures at home care of the Web and working one-on-one on assignments with teachers during school hours. The Globe talked to some of the students – kids taking senior math and biology classes – and their teacher to find how what they make of "flipping out."
These interviews have been edited and condensed.
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Alex Norman
Grade 12 biology
Pass: I feel like it better prepares me for university. It makes you responsible for your own learning, because if you don’t watch the videos at home, you wouldn’t have anything to ask your teacher the next day. I also have less homework to do in this type of class.
Fail: It’s frustrating when you can’t ask the teacher a question you have when you are watching the videos at home. I usually have to write them down and take them to school the next day or post it on our Facebook wall. I also don’t know if I could have handled this flipped class when I was younger, because you have to be pretty mature and responsible. I feel like I would have fallen behind.
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Cameron McDermid
Grade 10 math
Pass: I can hit pause and rewind on the videos and go over them as many times I like. It’s easier to learn this way.
Fail: It works really well for math, because we have so many assignments, but I just don’t see how it would work for some of my other classes, like English.
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Walker Shanks
Grade 10 math
Pass: I do way less math work, because the videos I watch at home are pretty short and I’m able to get all my assignments done in class. Plus, it’s really boring to have to sit through 80 minutes of a teacher lecturing. I can hit pause on the video and stop for a bit.
Fail: I wish all my classes were flipped, but I don’t see how they would make it work for anything outside of social science, math and science.
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Steven Vetter
Grade 11 math
Pass: It’s way less stressful. After basketball practice, my brain is so fried and if I had to stay up to 1 a.m. to study for my test, I would get maybe 40 per cent and just flunk it. But if I had the time to study over the weekend, I might get like 80 per cent
Fail: Nothing negative to say.
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Morgan Jmaiff
Grade 12 biology
Pass: I’m a competitive skater and have regular excused absences from school. Normally, I would have to come into school and get my teachers to explain all over again everything I had missed. But with the flipped class, I just watch my teachers on YouTube. And if I have a question, my teacher gets back to in minutes on Facebook or Twitter. It makes school less stressful overall. Everything we do in class is super useful.
Fail: Nothing really.
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Graham Johnson
Grade 10 and 11 math teacher who has flipped his classes
Pass: I can’t say this is the silver bullet for education quite yet, but everything seems very positive. Anecdotally class averages are up five per cent. I think it’s been worth it as I can have students going at different paces. Some of my stronger students are about two units ahead of some of my weaker students. This kind of differentiation lets me meet the needs of all my learners.
Fail: I’d be lying if I say this hasn’t taken a lot of our personal time to get this off the ground.
