I remember back in high school when my teachers first proposed the idea of flipped learning, and everyone let out a massive sigh. Flipped learning is the notion that students are to learn and memorize material at home, and class is a time solely for questions and applications. Initially, I assumed this idea would be great. It sounded solid in theory and would make actual classroom time more engaging. However, this implementation not only increased out-of-class time, but it also required that we now add video lecture time to already assigned homework and exam studying time, while also physically showing up for multiple hour-long classes each day. Ridiculous.
The general narrative was that this technique was a novel, norm-breaking method of teaching, but if anything, it just exponentially increased the required time commitment for students per class, per day. That being said, I completely understand why it was proposed in the first place, and its theoretical advantages. For instance, having pre-recorded lectures enables us to speed up or slow down videos based on whether we are slow typers or find particular concepts challenging. You can take breaks and learn at your own pace. You can bypass the downsides of an overcrowded and noisy lecture hall and actually hear what the professor is saying. All of these advantages are undeniable, but so is the downside of the added time commitment.
The pre-recorded lecture format could definitely work and be massively beneficial (without the consequence of adding time) if in-person class sessions were not mandatory and instead optional-but-recommended office hours. In a flipped classroom, if one has a question, they might have to spend the majority of the mandatory class time listening to the questions of others, thus wasting more time that could be spent learning. While the flipped method is beneficial to the learning process, it is also an inefficient way to learn.
Additionally, we pay tuition to learn from our professors, and at times, it feels that the flipped learning method is simply a way to shortchange students of their tuition and provide an easy way out from genuinely taking the time to teach students. One way to mitigate this would be for professors to record, post and let students watch lectures on their own time. The traditional teaching method truly highlights the knowledge and teaching abilities of professors, both of which are overshadowed by flipped learning. And as great as flipped learning sounds in theory, I think the sighs of my classmates are warranted.