How to implement a flipped Class

Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann started the flipped learning movement in 2007. We strongly encourage you to read their book Flip your class before you start. Also you probably need to navigate through many resources available at Flipped Learning Network. Once you are ready to implement a flipped learning strategy in your class, we recommend that you start with Classroom Salon, a platform developed at Carnegie Mellon University.Classroom Salon is designed from ground up to support flipped classrooms. In a flipped classroom, the idea is to have students do their reading of lecture notes or watching lecture videos "before" the class. Then in class they do work as groups or individually to complete homework. Teachers task is to adopt a strategy that is a combination of short lectures and/or group or individual work in class. Teacher facilitates discussions and set the tone for the class. Teacher is responsible for tracking student work, assessing and adjusting to find the best ways to support student learning.

Tools needed to properly implement a Flipped Class

There are many ways to do a flipped classroom. You can find many of them at the Flipped Learning Network. Here are some of our suggestions.

  • Upload course documents and videos that students can read/watch before class.
  • Ask students not only to read documents and watch videos, but also to actively make annotations
  • Track all students annotations, document and video hotspots (based on student work) prior to class
  • Capture a summary of student preparation work before class that informs what needs to be covered in class
  • Create an outline of a lesson plan for class based on flipped learning data

  • Salon provides many tools to accomplish ALL of the above tasks. You never have to worry about not having a class structure. Salon data can propose a class structure based on "student activities". Rather than making assumptions about what students did or did not do, now make decisions based on real data. What things still need to be covered in class? Where are the learning gaps? Which students are really having trouble? How can you device strategies to help those students. Flipped Learning is good for the student. But implementing a flipped class can be resource intense unless you have the right tool set. Classroom Salon is one of the BEST platforms to support teachers who wants to implement "flipped Learning". Here is how to get started.

    Step 1: Sign up for an Account

    Sign up for a Classroom Salon account if you do not have one. You only need to sign up for salon once. But you can create multiple salon accounts using different emails. With your free salon registration you can create any number of salons

    Step 2: Create a Salon

    Create a salon for your flipped learning class. Keep it private or public. Salons is the place for your students to engage with your content. As salon allows students to "directly" annotate documents and videos, it can provide user analytics like no other

    Step 3: Enroll Students

    Enroll Students in your Salon. Easiest way to get students into your salon is to ask them to create an account with registration code: "popcity" (no quotes) and share the salon link with your students so they can join.

    Step 4: Design a Flipped Learing Strategy

    What documents you want students to read before class? what videos you want them to watch? Gather all documents and videos and add them to your salon. Add annotations to get students pay attention to particular content

    Step 5: Add Content

    Here is how to add Documents and Videos to your salon

    Step 6: Tags and Questions

    Tags and questions are a great way to find course analytics. As students read content or watch videos, they will comment using one of the pre-defined tags (eg: discuss in class or give more examples). Later you can filter by tags to find specific content that students are having trouble with. or add questions that students can respond to by selecting relevant portion of the content. Here is how to embed tags and questions to your documents

    Step 7: Create Reports

    You can easily create student activity reports that can be used to give students a participation grade. You can also inspect their annotations for qualitative analysis. Create a report of activities to help with your "flipped class"

    Step 8: Integrate with your course webpage

    If you already have a course webpage, you can integrate Salon activities to your course webpage or learning. All salon activities are embeddable URL links (like google docs links). They can be emailed or placed as a link in your course webpage. All students do is to click on the link and perform the tasks.Click here to see how to embed salon links in your existing course webapge. You still access course analytics from your salon page

    There are more ideas to come as we progress as a group. Some of those will come from you. Now is the time to get started. Join the "flipped learning" movement. Make a difference. Adopt modern learning techniques that are suitable for today's young generation. Become a "true believer" of flipped learning so you can influence the future development of classroom salon platform at Carnegie Mellon University.