The ultimate goal of the flipped classroom is to end it!! Think about it.  The flipped approach to teaching provides time to do more innovative, experiential, discovery-based projects in class. We often post our lectures online so that we have more time to do these kinds of activities in class. I find that I am more and more having students discover concepts in class and using the screencasts to summarize what they have learned. Using this method the screencasts do not actually save class time.  They are still useful for students to review what they have learned.  As I approach the teaching of my classes with a student-centered state of mind, the more I am finding that I want students to figure stuff out for themselves. Even putting lectures online is often giving students too much information. The problem that we all have is that there is just not enough time to have students discover every concept on their own. Even in project-based learning classes there is often a call to post some lectures online to save class time.

The ideal is to kill the flipped classroom. Make it defunct!  End it!  Make it no more! Why put lectures online when there are so many ways students can explore the material on their own?  Unfortunately the reality is that we don’t have enough time in class. We do need the screencasts as a crutch. Until that time when we have the perfect curriculum (ha!), or enough time to do exactly what we want to in class (ha, ha!) we will probably always need ways to save time in class. The flipped classroom is one such approach.