Beyond the Flipped Classroom: A Distinctive Classroom Environment

The most important element in a distinctive classroom environment is the expert – you. Sharing your expertise through allowing students into your mind as you explore topics with them. Developing a distinctive classroom environment involves creating opportunities in interactive problem solving and live dialogue. Students will also enjoy group processes of communicating, cooperating, debating and negotiating. Creating this face to face, academically dynamic, and safe environment will create an environment of curiosity, critical thinking, flexibility, and a desire to explore topics of interest.

Prepare students for the interactive classroom by assigning and using many methods of knowledge exploration; including video lectures, interviews with topic experts (conducted by the students or the professor), sharing links to peer reviewed articles, creating a treasure hunt to discover unique and varying viewpoints of topics, model for students your learning as you read aloud about a topic, create debates using evidence, the list is endless.

This presentation shares information about creating a distinctive classroom environment and includes examples of student preparation materials and a demonstration of the teaching environment with attendee participation.