by Bill Cushard

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past three years, you have heard about the flipped classroom model. Since Khan Academy popularized it, classrooms all over the world have begun trying it. Although many have adopted the model, there are skeptics who believe the flipped classroom has too many problems and will not work.

Are the skeptics right?

Let’s look at the evidence. New research studying the flipped classroom found that by allowing students to watch a lecture before class final scores increased by over five percent. It turns out that the flipped classroom model works. Five percent may not seem like much, but apparently that is a huge increase in education.

Before you start thinking that this only works for school children learning math, understand that the research referenced above was conducted on pharmaceutical students. In other words, on adult learners.Let’s look at the evidence. New research studying the flipped classroom found that by allowing students to watch a lecture before class final scores increased by over five percent. It turns out that the flipped classroom model works. Five percent may not seem like much, but apparently that is a huge increase in education.

So what does this mean for software training?

It means we should think a bit differently about how we design software training. There are three main ways people learn new software.

1. Figure it out on their own (books, documentation, YouTube videos, tinkering)
2. Take formal self-paced, eLearning courses
3. Attend a live training class

In software training, it is mostly an either/or proposition. Either you figure it out on your own by tinkering, trying, reading documentation, and books or you attend a formal training class in which you sit through lectures, see demonstrations, and try prepared examples in class. Obviously this either/or approach has worked for many because people are learning new software.

There is a very good debate on The Ship Show about this very topic that is worth a listen. Thanks to Matt Doar for pointing me to this podcast.

But more and more evidence is showing that a blended approach to learning is producing higher results. By designing software training that provides participants with lecture resources they can consume on their own time, and then bringing people together in a live session to spend more working examples and applying specific use cases can increase the effectiveness of how people learn a new software program.

What do you think? How have you learned software in the past? What has worked for you and what hasn’t?

About Bill Cushard

Bill became a training guy early in his career when a group of 20 new hires showed up and there was no trainer. When HR came looking to find someone to do the training, Bill yelled, "I'll do it!" He has been a trainer ever since.

Bill has built and led training organizations and eLearning projects at service organizations like E*TRADE, Accenture, and TimeWarner Cable.

He is the author of a blog, The LX Designer, where he shares knowledge on enterprise learning and is active on Twitter in the learning and training space.