After defining “flipping the classroom,” this article discusses the key components of a flipped lesson and shares CALL-IS instructors’ concerns and insights which predominantly focus on the global challenge of student motivation. Here is a sampling of their concerns: Will students complete the lesson outside of class? Will this help students achieve greater educational goals? Will they reach our expectations, or will they just arrive in class with the usual excuses which could be hashtagged “my dog ate my homework”?

What does “flipping the classroom” mean? As defined by Graney (2013), the flip is in homework. The homework in a flipped lesson is what the class work has been: The action of students learning the lesson now takes place outside of class, thus allowing them more time to define, repeat, and review as often or infrequently as they need before coming to class to complete the scaffolded exercises, activities, or role-plays. It means that students will be engaged in higher order thinking of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation by receiving their educational input outside of the classroom. They will read, watch videos, or listen to recorded podcasts. What does this mean to the students? Will a majority of them benefit more than from completing typical homework? Will students be engaged with this type of lesson or get swayed into a 42-minute game of Candy Crush? Will the lesson be as valuable to them outside the classroom? They might instead think, “The teacher doesn’t even want to do it, but makes us do it. This homework doesn’t matter because the teacher doesn’t even teach it to us.” Will they embrace it as a beneficial pedagogical innovation?

The aim is that students’ completion of the assignment outside of class could produce better analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, while student participation and engagement would improve in class. At home, students are expected to take responsibility over their learning of the material so they will be better prepared for what activities will occur in class the next day. They become “masters” of the material before completing classroom exercises. The consensus on a common concern of online CALL-IS commentators was that some proof of completed homework would need to be required. A number of educational videos, from places such as TeacherTube or YouTube, have quizzes integrated into the videos which the teachers could assign for students to complete and bring to class to satisfy the “homework completed” requirement.

Educational input specifically in the form of videos has been closely associated with flipped classrooms. There are two common avenues for educational videos: preexisting videos and self-made videos. If you’d like to use what has already been created, you might find resources such as TeacherTube, YouTube, TED-ED, Educreations, or ShowMe beneficial. If you’d rather make and edit your own educational videos, there are Screencast-o-matic,Jing, or Camstudio; or with some funds invested, you could use Camtasia as well as others (Graney, 2013).

The typical homework, then, in this flipped classroom is actually classwork: It is conducted in the classroom with the teacher there to clarify, assist, and correct answers individually, in pairs, or in small groups. In this way, educational muscle memory comes in to play. If your class is already run like this, you are ahead of the game; if your class reflects the more typical model, this is another method you can consider in trying to gain more instructional time with students. Because the classroom focus is on students’ application of the material they learned outside of the classroom, this frees up more time in class to achieve greater goals. Learners are still the center of the lesson; their needs, of course, are top priority. With more time to complete multiple scaffolding of classroom activities, students can make greater gains in their learning process, which is globally a treasured educational goal. A noteworthy benefit to the flipped classroom is that the instructor has more time in class to work and could make greater progress. To that point, Majumdar (2014) notes administrators and teachers saw progress in that failure rates drop 20%; dropout rates were lowered as well. More than 90% of students are graduating, with the college attendance rate rising by almost 20% by 2012.

Whether the input is in a video, reading, or podcast, common consensus by faculty in the online discussion is that the course objectives need to be crystal clear. Furthermore, students should see a valuable reason for this work as well as for it being learned outside of class. Many instructors supported and lauded a valid suggestion to use a rubric as an objective way to evaluate students for completing this work and for clarifying the criteria. Additionally, the assignment’s connection to a larger project, unit, or goal was viewed as essential to its success. Globally, instructors highlighted student motivation, both extrinsic and intrinsic, as a critical issue which has to be addressed. An instructor might get better results by providing extrinsic motivation (say, a grade) when the criteria for class the next day is met. This could be the impetus to complete what is required if the student is lacking sufficient intrinsic motivation. More discussion will need to be pursued to delineate the best ways to instill intrinsic motivation. This dual-faceted dilemma must be addressed with each individual homework assignment.

A typical challenge for instructors in flipping the classroom, then, is determining who has done the assignment outside of class and is ready to apply the material and complete the exercises in class. Giving quizzes which encompass the key points of the educational input was recommended by some instructors. A quick checking of students’ quiz answers would ascertain those who were prepared to move ahead into exercise completion. With the traditional classroom homework assignment, we have questions answered on paper to prove that students completed the exercises. For the flipped classroom, there can be a similar requirement: some proof that they have completed the video, reading, or podcast. Our classes will still, the discussion blog faculty concurs, be divided into those who are prepared, those who are not prepared, and those who can do even more than the instructor anticipated. At least with non-flipped lessons, we knew the students had the educational input our class activities were based on, yet there can be uncertainty in how well they understood it.

In conclusion, a common albeit critical thread throughout the discussion, which was best stated by Sandy Wagner of the Defense Language Institute, was that when instructors are flipping the classroom there is “the need to remain true to established teaching practices and allow the technology to support the learning process.” Many instructors concurred that this is quintessential.

The phenomenon of flipping the classroom does, in some ways, address 21st century students’ learning process. As we can see, with classroom Internet connectivity, students’ learning process takes on a different form; by the time a relevant question comes up in class and a few students offer their opinion, another student has accessed the Internet for the answer. Case in point: In one of my classes, a reference was made that the tallest skyscraper currently in the world is the one in Dubai, with a total height of 800 meters. Debate ensued for approximately 1 minute about whether 800 meters was accurate. Ali and his iPhone discovered that indeed Dubai’s skyscraper is precisely 830 meters. Discussion over; it all transpired virtually instantaneously. With the speed of learning at this rate, how can 21st century students be patient and tolerant enough during a traditional lesson? How can they feel engaged in classrooms being taught with 20th century teaching methods?

Are we ESL instructors expecting too much to be completed outside of class? Or do we simply recognize that with CALL lessons being flipped outside the classroom, students could become as highly motivated toward learning as we are in the creation of those lessons? If you’d like to learn more about the flipped classroom and th 21st century students’ learning process influenced by CALL, come see my presentation at TESOL 2014, in Portland, Oregon, in the Electronic Village.

References
Graney, J. (2013, October). Flipping Your EL Classroom: A Primer. TESOL Connections.
Majumdar, A. D. (2014, January). Flipped Classrooms: A Technology-Driven Teaching Method. Retrieved from http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/flipped-classrooms-a-technology-driven-teaching-method