Flipped Teaching Eased the Transition of Faculty to Remote Teaching During the COVID‐19 Pandemic

Gopalan, Chaya; Serrano, Charles; Dickey, Paige; Bracey, Georgia; Fickas, Julie; Bartels, Lynn; Locke, Sharon

Compared to the traditional teaching (TT) method where students are lectured during class time, the flipped teaching (FT) design shifts lecture out of the classroom, as homework, and uses the class time to engage students in discussion, peer collaboration, and knowledge application. The COVID‐19 pandemic displaced students and teachers from classrooms around the world. In response to these alterations, universities emergently transitioned to online course offerings. In this study, the perceptions and attitudes towards emergency remote teaching for faculty using the FT method were compared to those practicing the TT method, A survey instrument was used to collect the experiences of both FT educators (FTEs; n=23) and TT educators (TTEs; n=18) during their transition to mandatory online teaching. It was hypothesized that the FTEs would experience a smoother transition to online teaching compared to TTEs because FTEs had access to previously developed resources such as lecture videos and engaging resources for students to utilize outside the classroom. Three researchers coded the participants’ responses to the survey questions and extracted common and recurring themes. It was found that 47% of FTEs reported a smooth transition to online teaching whereas only 17% of TTEs made a similar claim. Conversely, only 4% of FTEs reported having a difficult transition to online teaching compared to 33% of TTEs. Moreover, 100% of FTEs felt that at least one aspect of their flipped classroom helped them transition their course to the online platform. FTEs generally reported higher levels of confidence and experience with online teaching. These findings suggest that FTEs were more experienced with online teaching, had greater confidence in their skillset, and FT strategies supported their transition to emergency remote learning. Thus, the FT model could be one of the remote teaching methods to be used.