Flipped Classroom

In the “flipped classroom” students prepare for classes via independent study using conventional or digital learning materials (articles, videos, lecture notes etc.). They acquire the subject knowledge (concepts, terminology etc.) required for the course individually and at their own pace.

Classrooms sessions are thus largely freed from the need to convey knowledge. This creates room for practice-oriented, authentic knowledge-related tasks. Here student interaction comes to the fore, as students address issues and ambiguities together and with the instructors. A central aspect is the consolidation and application of new knowledge via carefully selected assignments, and not just the abstract imparting of content. Instructors, with their specialist knowledge, provide orientation, answer questions and initiate reflection processes appropriate to the target group.

The flipped classroom is particularly suitable for helping students not only to acquire subject knowledge, but to develop personal problem-solving and teamwork skills. Tasks and projects of a flipped classroom teach them not only how to solve familiar, known problems, but how to tackle entirely novel issues and information gaps. In the future working world, particularly in the area of digital transformation, “external page 21st-century skills” will be ever more important.
The flipped classroom concept offers the ideal way for students to acquire and consolidate these future-oriented skills and non-disciplinary competences such as team work.

In deciding to offer the flipped classroom it is advisable to consider the following with regard to your course:

Using available knowledge:
Have other instructors in your department already deployed the flipped classroom, or similar teaching formats where students participate actively in learning and where their progress is visible in products such as posters, information graphics, texts, videos etc.? Can you profit from their experience?
Planning your resources:
What concrete help can you expect from student teaching assistants, Assistants, postdocs and colleagues? What foundation do these persons have in didactics?
Didactic knowhow:
You should be familiar, for example, with how to align learning objectives, learning activities and examinations. You should also have experience of methods which foster active student participation. The Unit for Teaching and Learning (UTL) offers courses in continuing education in university teaching, other courses are offered by the external page didactica program.

To find out more about the feasibility the UTL guidance team is here to help you with teaching issues in all areas. To make contact please send an email to:

Conventional courses often cannot give equal space to the acquisition of knowledge and to its supervised consolidation and concrete application. The flipped classroom is suitable for courses where students can acquire the relevant knowledge and concepts independently. Ideally, these are courses where the immediate application of new knowledge is possible and benefits from feedback from peers and teachers. The last section contains concrete ETH examples.

For classroom teaching, tasks should be formulated which best lend themselves not to independent study but to work and exchange with peers. On-site specialists (instructors and teaching assistants) then provide help and feedback. This procedure facilitates deeper and more sustainable learning. Students gain a better idea of their own learning progress and may save time when preparing for examinations.

Flipping the classroom also furthers the following objectives:

Even out students’ differing levels of previous knowledge
Alter previous conceptions and increase motivation for a theme
Foster critical thinking and the transfer of knowledge to practice
Promote teamwork, interdisciplinary problem-solving and communication skills

Deploying the flipped classroom involves considering content and tasks and assigning them to the following three phases: before, during and after classroom teaching. The central question is always: What should students be able to do in the end and what concepts, knowledge and application opportunities are necessary for this? Various media formats and learning settings are possible in any of these phases.

Frequently it is assumed that flipped classroom courses require videos and the significant time and effort involved in producing them. This is not really true: content and concepts can also be conveyed by other media (books, articles, lecture notes, presentations, images, infographics etc.). In addition, today videos can be created with relatively little effort, principally because in teaching the emphasis is how well the medium video furthers the learning process. The technical and aesthetic perfection is not the primary goal. The teaching situations where video is particularly useful are described under Video in teaching.

Here we provide a few Download examples of student activities (PDF, 57 KB) during the three flipped classroom phases (before, during and after the classroom phase).

In the flipped classroom setting instructors and teaching assistants assume new roles and tasks. The focus is no longer on content alone and designing learning activities but on supervising and helping students as they independently acquire concepts in group or project work. Teaching should be planned such that students receive continual feedback on their learning progress towards clear, measurable goals.

It is essential that the planning of the activities before, during and after the classroom phase is well thought-through. For planning purposes, tasks and assignments can provide milestones. They will require students to address a topic in a targeted manner, and integrally affect student learning in subsequent phases. They help to materialize the desired knowledge and thought structures and they trigger those mental activities and work processes inherent in a discipline.

In a flipped classroom the independent activity of students is fostered by a number of tasks. The quality of these must be high, because they will be sources of student motivation. Keywords here might be: adjusted level of difficulty, authenticity, variability, suitable use of digital media, etc.

The following may be useful when deploying new methods in the classroom phase.

Download Checklist for multiple choice items (PDF, 489 KB)
ETH Edu App: Electronic clicker questions for classroom sessions (formative assessment)
Do-it-yourself-Videos (kits obtainable from ID-MMS)
Download Template for video story boards (DOCX, 35 KB)
Video Services in ID-MMS
external page Video on evidence-based multimedia learning with recommendations by Richard Meyervon Richard Meyer

April 2015: "Flipped Classroom –More scope for classroom teaching via flexible transmission of knowledge"
February 2016: "Implementing flipped classrooms – Options for practical implementation"
April 2017: "Flipping large classes. Facilitating active learning in the classroom"

Further ETH links:
"Developing character while learning. Global citizenship in the classroom"