Flipped Classroom

The new style of teaching that is currently being talked about is the flipped classroom, also referred to as flipped learning. The technical definition for flipped learning is “an approach which direct instruction moves the group learning space to the individual learning space”(Walsh). Theoretically, this should be simple and help the students get help on difficulties with their work in class. In an actual classroom setting, there are several other factors to account for that have been looked over. The main factors are lack of ambitious students who are willing to go the extra step, absence of availability of internet and technology access to some, the lack of work to do in an English composition course due to it becoming out of class work,

The idea of the flipped classroom is to allow students to go at their own pace so they can get a full understanding of the lessons. Though this may seem like a great idea, it has a flaw. This is a student's ability to work hard at finding the easy way out. Not all students will cheat the system, but there are always several who will. According to U.S. News, Central Methodist University has a four-year graduation rate of 42 percent, but a six-year graduation rate of 52 percent (“How Does Central Methodist University Rank Among America's Best Colleges?”). The other ten percent of students who take the two extra years to graduate are the ones who just barely skim through. Using the flipped classroom ideas makes it easier for these students to find a new excuse. They can now claim they do not fully understand the lesson when in reality, they just didn’t want to do the lesson. These students will get behind and at the end of the semester, they will not be where they should be in the

In those classes, it makes some sense, and for people who are quick learners and very good self-teacher, it’s a great idea. But for those who are not like that this style of a classroom will be a struggle. Some classes are huge. These classes are common for freshman to have to take. If several freshman students in one class need help to understand the lesson, a teacher may not be able to get to them all, long enough for them to all understand. On top of that, if the materials students have to study are poor, as a DePauw professor points out, “students would not get as much from a flipped classroom as they would from a traditional in-class lecture” (Burba). In a traditional classroom students take notes and go over lessons outside of class, then they come to class where the professor lectures over it to be sure the students have a sound understanding of the material. Then they use the writing labs to help them perfect their essays. In an English classroom, the flipped classroom learning style doesn’t work as well as other subjects. In English, the homework is the essays. Therefore theoretically, the essays would be done in class and the lectures listened to outside of class. The flaw here is that colleges have writing labs where they write and work on the essays. With the lectures being done for homework, and the essays being done in writing labs, there isn’t anything left to do in