5 Easy Ways to Encourage Independent Learning in the Flipped Classroom

There are lots of questions about the flipped classroom and how it benefits student learning. One of our top goals as teachers is to help our students become independent learners. We want to provide them the help they need to achieve success, but ultimately, especially in secondary school, they are a few short years away from needing to function on their own, whether at college, in the workplace, or just in society at large. This can be a tricky situation to navigate, however, especially post-pandemic when many of our students are performing below grade level. What scaffolds do our students need? How and when do we remove these scaffolds so students learn to demonstrate true mastery without them?

Using the flipped classroom model (which includes taking maximum advantage of your school’s learning management system) is a great way to help our students become independent learners while still providing them with a wide range of supports. The flipped classroom also prepares students to succeed in an Internet-dependent world where they are expected not to recall every fact they learned in school but to access and navigate a wealth of tools and resources. We’re sharing a few thoughts about ways you can use this model to promote independent learning in your students.

Flipped Classroom Must-Haves

Embrace repetition.

Sometimes it feels like our job is not to teach but to entertain. Rather than finding the strategy that best enables learning for our students and using it consistently, we feel compelled to find new, fun, engaging activities for every unit. When we regularly assign the same tasks, however, we give our students opportunities to hone their skills.

Create a course resource page on your LMS where students can find support when they need it. This is a great place to include things like sentence starters (for writing or discussion), literary terms, common mythological and biblical allusions, and guides for correctly punctuating, integrating, and citing quotations. Even when introducing a fun new activity, incorporate similar expectations so students can continue to utilize the same resources.

Hone your screencasting skills.

One of the key elements of a flipped classroom model is the use of videos to give students access to instruction whenever and wherever they need it. While traditionally this refers to lectures, we found our greatest success with screencasts that walked students through common tasks and assignments. When students needed help, we could direct them to the video, where they could not only hear step-by-step instructions but actually see us complete them.

Create a page, not unlike the FAQs pages you see on many websites, on your LMS so students can easily access them as many times as they need to. At the beginning of the school year, it is helpful to create short videos for how to login to commonly used websites, how to navigate your LMS, how to correctly set up a document using MLA format, how to complete common assignments (e.g., reading check-ins, guided reading assignments, discussion boards, etc.).

Teach your students to use resource pages and screencasts.

As new (and, embarrassingly, not so new) teachers, we assumed students would figure out how to do things that seemed clear and common sense to us. We quickly learned that this was not true! It’s worth taking time at the beginning of the school year, unit, or lesson to show students where and how to access the resources you are providing for them. It may take a little bit more time at the beginning, but it will pay off toward the end. 

Pro-Tip: Let parents know you do this, too! If you’re a parent yourself, you know how often directions get lost in translation between your child and their teacher. Giving parents a head’s up allows them to stay involved.

Enforce the use of resource pages and screencasts.

We’re so used to answering whatever questions our students ask of us, even when that means repeating the same directions or providing the same answer over.and.over.and.over again. The more we can resist the temptation to answer questions that are answered in the resources we have created, the more likely our students are to use those resources. When we directed students back to the screencast or rules for using quotations before providing an answer, our students began learning how to help themselves, and we were freed up to work with those students who most needed our help, which was one of the primary reasons we were encouraged to switch to the flipped classroom model in the first place!

Link to external sources your students might find helpful.

We frequently linked to YouTube videos, online dictionaries we found useful, audiobooks, Quizlet flashcard sets, review Kahoots, and websites like Sora where students could check out books for independent reading. Compiling those sources all in one place gives your students a toolbox they can access in order to achieve success in your class.

Pro-Tip: If your school has a common calendar, your library has study resources, or your counseling center has a help page, link to all of these as well. Lots of our students (and parents) have no idea the number of resources available to them. When you provide those links, you demonstrate your interest in the whole student, not just the one who shows up for your class each day.

So many of our students experience learned helplessness: after several times of attempting a task and failing, they come to believe they are incapable of experiencing success and stop trying. But when they know they can find the answers they need, they are empowered to continue doing so in the future. Teaching our students to be independent learners also helps to prevent teacher burnout: it’s exhausting holding every single student’s hand through every single assignment.

It’s a lot more manageable to record yourself doing something once or quickly add a link to a resource page, so the students who can will help themselves and get to work independently. When we teach our students to find the tools they need to help themselves, we lessen the barrage of questions coming at us every day and free ourselves up to do the work only we can do, whether that is answering content-based questions, building relationships with students, creating and planning lessons, or communicating with parents; again, these were important factors in motivating our shift to a flipped classroom.

If you have a flipped classroom, or even if you don’t, how do you encourage independent learning, especially when you have students at varying levels? What go-to links can students always find on your LMS? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram @threeheads.works to share your thoughts. If you’re interested in seeing how we guided students to resources on Canvas LMS, check out our YouTube video about setting up a weekly agenda page.