Flipped Learning · Flipped Classroom
Flipped Learning
What is flipped learning?
- Theory by video beforehand, in-person time for activities
- Save in-person time for practice and discussion
- The key is actually getting participants to do the pre-work
The first thing that changes when you adopt flipped learning is not the lecture script but the design sequence. Before, you built the slides first and fit practice into whatever time was left. Now you first decide what participants will do in person, then extract only the minimum knowledge that activity requires and turn it into a pre-session video. That is why a pre-session video is closer to activity prep material than to a recorded lecture. Filming an entire two-hour lecture and posting it is not flipped learning; it is just an e-learning playlist.
There is a practical ceiling on how much learning you can assign as pre-work. For videos watched in spare moments during the workday, completion rates collapse once you exceed 7 minutes per video or 20 minutes in total. Three 6–7 minute videos, each with a 2–3 question check quiz, work far better than one 20-minute video. The similar-looking blended learning holds as long as online and offline are mixed, but flipped learning holds only when the online part comes before the in-person part and is a prerequisite for the in-person activities. Without that order and dependency, it is flipped learning in name only.
The most common failure point is participants who arrive without doing the pre-work. If the instructor feels bad for them and spends the first 20 minutes re-covering the concepts, the half who diligently watched learn 'I didn't need to watch.' Completion rates for the next cohort drop without exception. Set a firm rule of no re-explaining for non-completers; instead, seat them among completers when forming groups so peers can explain. One more thing: if video time doesn't count as working hours, pre-work becomes homework after hours and turns into a labor-relations issue. Securing 30 minutes of work time with team leader approval is half of managing the completion rate.
Jihye ChoiExpert in design thinking, new-hire onboarding, and train-the-trainer programs
John KimAuthor of B2B Marketing Design and CEO of Nanum ConsultingThe idea of reversing the order of classroom lecture and homework became widely known in the late 2000s, when US high school teachers Jon Bergmann & Aaron Sams began distributing their lesson videos in advance.
Consider a hypothetical case. Company A, an auto parts manufacturer, has 620 employees and annual revenue of KRW 180 billion (≈ US$134,670,100). Each year it split 72 newly appointed team leaders into three cohorts of 24 for a two-day, 16-hour classroom program, and every year plant managers protested that they couldn't release people from the line for two days. The talent development team redesigned the program as 40 minutes of pre-work + one in-person day.
- Kim, the talent development manager, pulled the 6 hours of the 16 that covered labor law and the evaluation system, split them into six 7-minute videos, and added a 3-question check quiz to each.
- When pre-work completion for the first cohort stalled at 54%, Kim, the L&D manager, emailed each division head a list of non-completers three days before the session and announced that employees could spend 30 minutes of work time on the videos with their team leader’s approval.
- We agreed with the instructor on a principle: no re-explaining concepts to anyone who skipped the pre-work. Instead, when forming groups, we placed each participant who skipped it with three who completed it, so peers could do the explaining.
- The in-person day was devoted entirely to practice. Groups ran role-plays built on four real scenarios of conversations with low performers, and the instructor moved from group to group asking just one question: 'How do you think your team member heard what you just said?'
- After running three cohorts, pre-work completion rose from 54% to 91% and practice time grew from 3 hours to 7 hours. Classroom days dropped from two to one, cutting annual production-line downtime by 576 hours.