Flipping learning – Strategies for more engagement in eLearning

Flipped learning isn’t new; the idea has been around for many years in L&D and educational circles. It’s a great technique to add to your instructing toolkit and can enhance learning as it provides meaningful feedback and differentiation for learners. (Please note that in the UK, flipped learning is usually refered to as ‘flip learning‘)

What is Flipped learning?

Flipped learning is the practice of flipping the usual instructional process by having learners complete tasks and learning before the instruction actually takes place. An assessment is performed on this material before the learners can access further training, and then a learning path from their scores is created.

What does flipped learning look like?

Flipped learning is not simply giving learners a resource or handout before the training. It is far more intentional. The best way of using flipped learning is to provide the learner with a differentiated learning pathway based on their response to the stimulus material. In an educational setting, this looks like providing learners with learning materials and an assessment prior to a lesson. When they arrive at the lesson, they are then separated according to their performance in the assessment. In a training setting, this could be administrated through an LMS, with learners who score in certain ranges being provided with a different set of training materials.

For example, before training on a new set of tech tools, learners could self-assess their skills in those tools. Learners who give themselves a low score would access a beginner pathway, typically with more support and scaffolding. Those with a higher score could access an advanced pathway. There’s no need to recreate lots of resources here; we simply need to organise the learning materials that are most appropriate for each learning group.

What are the advantages of flipped learning?

One of the major advantages of flipped learning is that it moves away from the one-size-fits-all training that we often come across in L&D. It allows for those learners who have prior experience and enables L&D teams to make contingencies for those who have not managed to access the learning effectively. When implemented into an organizational culture, this kind of individualized learning approach can allow individuals to greatly enhance their skills.

What do we need to be careful of when flipping our learning?

Our pre-training materials need to be spot-on; they must be engaging otherwise our learners will disengage. An accurate assessment is also essential, as is a way of this information being fed back to us prior to the training beginning. In addition, separate learning pathways and differentiated materials need to be prepared and they must allow us to stretch and challenge the more experienced and scaffold and support the less confident learners.

Conclusion

Flipped learning works best for ILT and VILT, but could also be integrated with an LMS. This would require a significant number of materials to be developed for different learning pathways but could also provide a lot of rich data about user performance and interactions.