– Jon Bergmann – 

For this month, I reviewed 62 studies and articles and found some real gems.

This month has one of the penultimate studies I have read to date. The study created a flipped evaluation tool based on the Global Elements of Effective Flipped Learning. All Flipped Learning educators should seriously use this diagnostic tool to evaluate your practice. It was developed by Raul Santiago, María Teresa Sánchez-Compaña and Cristina Sánchez-Cruzado. They developed the tool in conjunction with many of the leading Flipped Learning educators in the world. It is the top research article and you can get the link to the tool below.

Besides the evaluation tool, the study that intrigued me the most was study number 2, which reported about how the researcher created a Flipped Class that enhances student leadership.  

We continue to see that Flipped Learning is a meta-strategy as it enhances other deeper learning strategies. Number 2 is Peer Instruction and Number 3 is Gamification, Number 4 is Project-Based Learning, and Number 5 is how FL enhances the use of student-response systems

Many of the other studies not in the top ten continue to show that Flipped Learning works in a wide variety of content areas. Content areas that I saw demonstrated positive gains in the following areas:

• • Surgery
  • Ophthalmology
  • Teaching English in China
  • Teaching technical writing in the Philippines
  • Teaching English vocabulary to Vietnamese students
  • EFL discursive contexts in a contrastive manner (I have no idea what that means)
  • Physical education for middle-school students
  • Physical activity course in higher ed (two studies)
  • Organizational dynamics
  • Differential calculus
  • E-learning media
  • Behavioral social science
  • Entrepreneurial project management

THE TOP 10

	Raul Santiago, María Teresa Sánchez-Compaña and Cristina Sánchez-Cruzado created a diagnostic tool which evaluates flipped learning teachers based upon the Global Elements of Effective Flipped Learning. The tool was validated by a team of experts and should prove to be an excellent tool to help the global community improve their flipped learning classes. I can’t emphasize just how important this tool can be. There is a lot of people flipping their classes, and many of them are not flipping according to the global best practices. I highly encourage all of you to use this tool to evaluate both yourself and your institution. The tool is in three languages and the links are below Italian. https://it.surveymonkey.com/r/hfay2020it English https://es.surveymonkey.com/r/Beta19_19 Spanish https://es.surveymonkey.com/r/eupf2019 Chinese: Coming Soon Note: the tool is undergoing some revisions based on some new research. The English tool is the most up-to-date.
	Sunitha Prabhu’s research title grabbed me: “Cultivating Student Leadership in the Flipped Classroom.” Sunitha has a fascinating class where she gives much of the control of learning back to the students. It is a Flipped-Mastery class but with the leadership twist. I loved how this class allowed students to fail and learn from their failures. Very thought-provoking.
	Sajid Nazir and others combined peer instruction and collaborative learning with flipped learning. Their classes featured students at whiteboards taking ownership of problems and being motivated to discuss ideas freely. Student performance and satisfaction increased. This study emphasizes the importance of making the group space collaborative and engaging
	Morris Siu-Yung Jong and others from The Chinese University of Hong Kong demonstrated that gamifying the online space in a flipped learning classroom increased the likelihood that students will complete and engage in the pre-work.
	Hanne Maria-Bingen and others from Oslo University (Norway) studied how using a student response system in the group space enhanced their flipped Anatomy and Physiology course. They noted how important it is to craft appropriate questions into their student response system. One finding of note is that utilizing this approach helped to encourage students who otherwise did not do the pre-work to do the pre-work because the questions were based upon the pre-class work. This study shows the importance of connecting the pre-class work to group space activities.
	Uraiwan Srichailard and others from King Mongkut’s University of Technology (Thailand) showed how Flipped Learning combined with Project-Based Learning fits with the Kolb Learning Cycles. This paper again illustrates how Flipped Learning is a meta-strategy that allows for deeper learning to occur in classes.
	Matthew Casselman and other Chemistry professors from the University of California Riverside found something novel. They found that the majority of student gains in their flipped study came during the asynchronous flipped pre-work. Their conclusion is that there is a need to take greater time and thought with how flipped educators create the pre-work. We often say in the flipped world, focus on the group space. But this study flies in the face of that. Interesting to see if this plays out.
	Stephanie Jacobs and Audrey Powers, librarians at the University of South Florida (USA) designed digital learning modules to teach students research skills. They found that students who used flipped digital learning modules performed better on final papers. This led them to encourage professors to require these modules in their classes. This study emphasizes how important it is to collect data in our flipped classes and share that data with others.
	Katie O’Connor and Liz Larkin, Royal College of Surgeons Ireland, found that students’ experience with their learning management system was poor. As flipped classrooms began to explode at the campus they sought to re-tool the LMS to meet the needs of their students. They simplified the user interface, conducted faculty development, and increased the amount of usable content which resulted in greater student satisfaction and increased student usage. This study shows how vitally important it is that institutions think systemically about the technology that they use making sure that the user experience (both the instructors and the students) is robust. I also notice how one of the catalysts for change was the fact that instructors were using Flipped Learning and the need for a robust and simple LMS was needed.
	Situjuh Nazara (Universitas Kristen Indonesia Jakarta, Indonesia) did a meta-analysis of Flipped studies in EFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and found that Flipped Learning has “big potentials to address problems raised within EFL classes…” I am seeing more and more meta-analysis’ of studies that back the big claim that Flipped Learning simply works. Of course, now, we need to figure out ways to make it work better.