Given the difficult-to-digest subject matter in many STEM classrooms, educators have customarily relied on traditional lecture-based educational methods where they spend class time walking through content and then assign homework problems to supplement that learning.
Liberal arts classrooms, on the other hand, often invert that structure. They task students with learning the material from a book outside the classroom and then turn class time into active discussion periods where they expand and develop what they’ve read.
“It’s difficult for an engineering student to extract the technical information from a book on their own,” said Stephanie Butler Velegol, instructor in environmental engineering. “Students need to hear the problem-solving out loud; they need to hear the way the professor works through the solution to the problem.”
The issue with the traditional lecture-based approach in STEM education is that even with capable and committed faculty, the method just doesn’t engage some students and keep them interested. Even when it is successful, educators find they have a hard time interacting with students when they’re constantly behind the lectern.
That’s where the flipped classroom comes in. In a flipped classroom, students gain technical knowledge through online videos that prepare them to participate in in-class activities, which may include problem-solving, discussions, brainstorming, design work, guest speakers, or field trips.