The Flipped Classroom

There are many new strategies being implemented in colleges and universities to try to improve higher education. One of these ideas is called the Flipped Classroom.  In most traditional classrooms, the instructor spends the class time giving a lecture, then assigns work to be done by the students at home.  In a Flipped Classroom, students are assigned to watch video lectures before coming to class and then during the class time, students and instructors actively work together on projects and assignments.  The idea is for the students to do a relatively passive activity (listen to a lecture) on their own, and to utilize classroom time in a more interactive way.  The increased interaction with the instructor and other students is believed to enhance learning.  This is now possible because of technological innovations which make it easy and inexpensive to provide video lectures to students through online course management systems.