Review the pedagogical and technical information below to inform your progress in Week Four. Have questions about what you learned here or ideas for future tips? Join Coffee & Answers (open support Zoom sessions with the Academic Technology Team) or email the Office of Teaching and Learning.
Pedagogical
Flipping a Lesson — Not the Whole Course
The flipped classroom is an instructional model that moves the initial learning of basic content outside class and reserves class time for applying and deepening understanding. Instead of using lectures to deliver all new information, instructors assign pre-class work that introduces foundational definitions and simple concepts. Then, class sessions focus on higher-order thinking such as application, analysis, evaluation, and creation. Importantly, flipping does not require re-designing the entire course. Instructors can successfully apply this model to a single unit, week, or lesson.
Step 1: Identify foundational learning outcomes.
Start by examining your lesson objectives. Identify which ones involve factual or conceptual knowledge, such as definitions, structures, or key terms. Clarify how that foundational knowledge supports more advanced outcomes that align with higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy.
Step 2: Design a pre-class assignment to build foundational knowledge.
Next, create a short assignment that allows students to learn prerequisite material independently. This may include a brief video, textbook reading, guided notes, or an online module with self-check questions. To encourage preparation, integrate a learning guide, quick quiz or reflection that reinforces accountability without adding major grading pressure.
Step 3: Use class time for higher-order activities.
Once students arrive prepared, replace lecture with active problem-solving, case studies, or group activities that challenge students to think critically. These teaching strategies help move learning from memorization to understanding, application, analysis, evaluation, and creation.
–Philomeena Behmer, Biology
Technical
What tools are available to flip a lesson?
The mechanism used for students’ first exposure to content can vary, from simple textbook readings to lecture videos to podcasts or screencasts. You could use Google Vids, Panopto, or even Zoom to pre-record a lecture.
To reinforce learning and encourage students to prepare for class, provide an incentive. This could range from an online knowledge check style Quiz to templated Google Doc worksheets. No matter the task you choose, you have created an incentive for students to come to class prepared by speaking their common language: points! In many cases, grading for completion rather than effort can be sufficient, particularly if in-class activities will provide students with the kind of feedback that grading for accuracy usually provides.
Zoom even offers activity options that can be adopted for common active learning activities, such as: class discussion, problem solving, cooperative learning, and graded and ungraded writing exercises, role-playing, case studies, group projects, think-pair-share, peer teaching, debates, Just-in-Time Teaching, and short demonstrations followed by class discussion. Wondering where to find these templated, easy-to-implement activities? Zoom has a vast array of Whiteboard Templates which can be searched by keyword or category. 
You can access Zoom Whiteboards even in an in-person classroom by going to your Zoom app on your computer or sju.zoom.us.
Please join any Coffee & Answers open support session for a live demonstration of any of these tools!
Are these tips helpful? Do you have a topic we should include in future weeks? Please let us know by emailing otl@sju.edu!
Additional Resources