A flipped classroom is an evolving pedagogical approach to education in which group learning is transformed into individual learning. The vacuum created in group learning is converted into an environment in which students learn to apply concepts and engage in creative activity under the guidance of an instructor. The students, therefore, get first-hand experience of the concepts they are learning about and understand their working in the real-world context.

The concept of the flipped classroom was first espoused by two high school teachers, Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams who then detailed it in their book Flip your classroom: Reach every student in every class every day (2012). They listed a complete range of advantages of a flipped classroom, the main being that it gave a level playing field to students of all abilities to excel, allowed greater one-to-one interaction between the teacher and the students, changed classroom management, and made the classroom transparent.

To illustrate flipped classroom model in higher education with an example, let us consider an English literature class on the renaissance literature period. In a traditional classroom, the instructor will provide some background about the period, talk about the main writers and their works before taking up the work of a particular author in detail. Now switch to the flipped classroom model and the instructor can divide the class into groups and then assign them research tasks, for instance, one group can research on the factors leading to the renaissance age, the other to a particular author, for instance, Edmund Spencer, William Shakespeare, or John Donne, with a specific focus on their works and what set them apart from their contemporaries.

Each group can then assign roles to each individual to collect information and then create a final multimedia presentation for the class. This sort of activity builds a greater connection with the subject, allowing students to dig deeper and find insights from their works. In fact, one group can also be assigned to research and bring to light the relevance of these works in the current times. Once this is done, there can be a group activity, for instance, enacting a drama from that age with the help of the educator, complete with costumes, backdrop, and props that bring alive the renaissance period. The flipped classroom, is therefore, non-linear and experience-based learning with the students as the dominant collectors and disseminators of information and the teacher playing the role of a guide.