Choosing What to Flip First: A Practical Guide for Faculty

Instead of starting with your favorite unit, focus on where students get stuck. A good first flipped module is one that:

• ▪️ Generates repeated questions. Look at office hours, email threads, or lab time. Where do you find yourself giving the same explanation over and over?
• ▪️ Shows up in tests. Review exam questions with high error rates or lab reports that frequently miss the same concept.
  
• ▪️ Is fundamental for later learning. Prioritize modules that underpin later content (e.g., basic microscopy before imaging, or mole concepts before reaction stoichiometry).

Choosing a single bottleneck like this lets you test a flipped workflow without a full redesign, and helps free up time in your schedule.

Once you’ve chosen a module, list what actually makes it challenging for students. If you don’t identify the exact friction points, flipping the module won’t solve the problem – it will just relocate it.

Use past exam patterns or quick surveys in class, and keep the list short and concrete:

• ▪️ Conceptual gaps. For instance, students confuse related terms (diffusion vs. osmosis; accuracy vs. precision).
• ▪️ Procedural overload. Labs where students are juggling safety, equipment, and a technical learning curve all at once.
  
• ▪️ Representation shifts. Topics that move quickly between graphs, equations, and real-world examples.

Here, the goal is to make in-person time more productive by moving introductory learning outside of the class and lab.

• ▪️ Move core explanations into short videos. Replace the long in-class walkthrough with a few videos that explain key ideas and examples or simple lab demonstrations.
• ▪️ Add a low-stakes check for understanding. Attach a short quiz to each video to encourage preparation. A randomized trial found that embedded pre-class quizzes led students to watch more and feel more engaged.²
  
• ▪️ Use class time for practice, not recap. Start with one or two quick questions to identify remaining confusion, then move into group problems, data analysis, or case work.

High-quality visual explanations are especially useful in STEM, where students often struggle to translate between diagrams, equations, and real lab procedures.

Have a look at our next post to explore why early feedback can matter more than grades, and how to build it in without adding to your workload.

You don’t need a full new course design to get started. Reuse and curate existing high-quality videos, mapping each one to one or two clear learning outcomes.

After the module, ask which materials actually helped students arrive more prepared, then adjust and expand to other bottlenecks over time.

If you’d like to try a flipped approach without a full course overhaul, starting with one high-impact module is often the most realistic step.

Short pre-class videos and more active in-class time can help students arrive better prepared while reducing how often you re-teach the same basics. Importantly, this flexible learning approach allows students to gain clear visual understanding at their own pace.

If you’d like to implement this without creating everything from scratch, we can help.

We’ll design a JoVE video playlist aligned with your course so you can introduce core concepts before class.

1. Jang, H. Y., & Kim, H. J. (2020). A meta-analysis of the cognitive, affective, and interpersonal outcomes of flipped classrooms in higher education. Education Sciences, 10(4), 115. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci10040115 
   
2. Jones, E. P., Wahlquist, A. E., Hortman, M., & Wisniewski, C. S. (2021). Motivating students to engage in preparation for flipped classrooms by using embedded quizzes in pre-class videos. Innovations in Pharmacy, 12(1), 6. https://doi.org/10.24926/iip.v12i1.3353