Flipped classrooms are very popular.  I see a lot of benefit in letting students have agency over their learning:  letting them learn when and where they want, and at a pace that works for them.  My main critique of the flipped classroom is that it removes most, if not all, student discovery.  Generally, videos are made that tell the students what they need to know.  Often, there’s little struggle or opportunity for students to figure things out. 

One strategy I’ve started doing is using a “flipped” approach in my classes where the “flip” is not when the learning happens but rather the roles the students and I play.  For example, today one of our class objectives was:  “I can simplify rational expressions.”  Instead of teaching the students how to do this, I put an example and the answer on the board and gave the students five minutes in their group to figure out how the answer was found.  They reverse engineered the method for simplifying rational expressions.  At the end of five minutes, the class had to teach me how to simplify.  I wrote down what they told me, synthesized their strategies and we moved on to the next skill.

This picture shows two skills done in this style.  The first is after they’ve taught me so you see the problem worked out and the strategies they came up with to do problems like these.  The second skill was the one they were working on when I took the picture.  They were working backwards to figure out how I got the answer I did. 

As I was doing this today, numerous students told me that “I like learning this way” and “This is fun” and “This is really making me think.”  I really like using this strategy when the skills can be deduced from prior knowledge.  There are of course times when they need me to introduce new concepts and there are problems that they simply cannot reverse engineer.  However, as much as we can we should require our students to discover, be resourceful and figure things out. 

I know that this works nicely in a Math class but I’d love to hear if this approach could be used in other departments and if any of us are already trying this type of “flipped” classroom.