The flipped classroom concept comes from top educators’ extensive study and experimentation. Let’s take a look at what flipping your classroom entails, and how the WizIQ Virtual Classroom helps you get the most out of this technique.
What are flipped classrooms?
Flipping your classroom involves reversing how you look at lectures and “homework.” With a flipped classroom approach, students listen to class lectures at home, typically as pre-recorded (asynchronous) video or audio modules along with doing their pre-class reading assignments.
Then, when they come to school, they do their “homework” in class. This approach gives students immediate access to both teachers and peers as they work through the material. It also allows the teacher to focus on facilitating learning in truly collaborative environments.
Why are flipped classrooms so popular?
Teachers adopting the flipped classroom approach love how much more interactive their student time becomes. No more talking at people, watching them zone out during “stand and deliver” lectures. Instead teachers get to spend their time teaching, by answering student questions and helping them apply their new knowledge to their homework.
Students enjoy getting immediate help when they get stuck, more chances for hands-on learning and in general are more engaged by doing something active rather than just sitting and listening.
How is the WizIQ Virtual Classroom an effective tool for flipping classrooms?
Today’s technologies make flipped classrooms a truly practical, yet innovative option. In particular, the WizIQ Virtual Classroom offers a number of benefits for both teachers and students.
Benefits for teachers
In the flipped classroom paradigm, WizIQ helps teachers get improved results from their students. Features that facilitate these improvements include:
- Creating and recording lectures in the WizIQ virtual classroom for asynchronous delivery
- Using the whiteboard tool for writing and drawing
- Using the advanced math, text and drawing tools
- Sharing a wide variety of content during your sessions, including word documents, spreadsheets, PDFs, slides, and YouTube videos
Teachers themselves benefit from the following WizIQ features:
- Organizing lecture content in your folders
- Getting student feedback and publishing it on your profile page
- Keeping students on your site by integrating the WizIQ Virtual Classroom with your LMS, CMS or website with our developer APIs
Though, remember that teachers can also deliver live, synchronous classes through WizIQ. Use the virtual classroom synchronously for:
- Taking student questions
- Guiding practice sessions
- Guiding lab time
Even better, you can record these sessions and distribute them amongst students for review, aiding those who missed class or want to review.
There are other side benefits as well. Imagine snow days no longer stopping classes. Instead, teacher and students can meet online!
Benefits for students
There are plenty of benefits to students in flipped classrooms when you choose WizIQ. They can:
- Download and learn from recorded lectures at their own pace and time, including features such as pause, rewind, watch again, and review.
- No more failure to complete homework that the student couldn’t finish without assistance, which is made worse when there’s no time to help the next day in class.
- Much more time to “do” than just listen, allowing teachers to better address different types of learners.
What’s more, teachers can encourage students to schedule their own virtual classroom sessions with classmates. Students can use these sessions to tutor one another, collaborate, review for exams, etc.
Parents can view the recordings as well, letting them better understand each teacher’s approach to particular concepts, or to refresh their own skills as they help their children study. The next time parents ask “What did you learn in school today?” their children can respond with “Watch the videos” instead of the typical “Nothin’.”
Interested in learning more? Request a demo to assess the WizIQ Virtual Classroom, and experiment with your own ideas around flipped classrooms. The e-teaching community will be delighted to hear your WizIQ flipped classroom approach and thoughts. We look forward to brainstorming and learning with you!
Why I flipped my classroom