Faculty Learn How to Flip Their Classrooms

More than 60 faculty throughout the Utah State University System learned first-hand from Barbi Honeycutt, a renowned teaching expert, how to effectively flip their classrooms at an Empowering Teaching Excellence (ETE) faculty seminar.

“Retention is what makes the flipped classroom so powerful,” said Honeycutt. “The learning environment it creates enables students to better retain what they’re being taught because they work with the content in a more practical, hands-on way.”

Honeycutt recounted an example of a colleague teaching the same two classes in a semester – one class was a flipped format, the other class was not. At the semester mid-point, students were scoring about the same overall, but in the final exam the flipped classroom students graded out nearly a whole grade higher because they retained the course content better.

Honeycutt’s hands-on seminar took attending faculty through the entire process of how to produce a flipped classroom lesson beginning with her telling participants “When you start thinking about a lesson, think about what you want your students to do, not what you want to say.”

“Flipping the classroom is an effective teaching method to actively engage teachers and students in rich discussions intended to challenge students’ retention of learning content,” said John Louviere, assistant dean of USU’s Academic and Instructional Services – the office sponsoring ETE’s faculty seminar series.

The next ETE faculty seminar is Competency Based Education: Separating Fact from Fiction. It is slated for Thursday, March 30, and will feature Matthew Pellish, the senior director of strategic research and education at the Education Advisory Board.

Writer: Jay Wright, 435-797-2080
Contact: John Louviere, 435-797-7144