The Flipped Classroom (2) Preparing Before Class

A colleague in a liberal arts discipline once asked me how my flipped teaching is different from him asking students to read the book before coming to class. My responses are:
1) Expectation. Students in flipped classes must know the majority of the material. They study a lot more than doing a preview level of reading.
2) Accountability. In my flipped classes, various measures are created to help students learn and to also prevent them from not learning. I can effectively weed out "pretenders" or "free-riders".

Here is how I raise expectation and enforce accountability in flipped teaching:

​Video lessons and/or reading guides. For advanced classes like Real Analysis or Modern Geometry, I use a detailed reading guide. But for most classes I teach, I use video lessons (up to Calculus III.) Each video lesson is 8 to 15 minutes long. (A recent research claims that 8 minutes are optimal for student attention but one sometimes simply has more to say.) If you have a lot of material, break it up into smaller chunks.

​Guided notes. These notes are based on the video lessons, and students must use them while watching the videos. My guided notes require students to write down important information, answer/solve basic questions, and self-assess their understanding. The notes are spot-checked in class for grades.

Check-in Quizzes. Students also take a short online quiz, 5 multiple-choice questions or so, based on the video lessons and guided notes. The questions are rather straightforward Students must complete the quiz before the class begins.

​The better the instructor holds students responsible for learning before class, the more effective the flipped teaching would be.

Next: (3) In-Depth Learning in the Classroom