‘Flipped classroom’ concept makes learning more interesting for students at Chinese University of Hong Kong

Imagine going to school every day to have classes with only group discussions, case simulation, question-and-answer sessions, role-play and other activities, as long as you have watched your teacher’s lectures online the evening before.

This is the concept of “flipped classroom”, which, despite its increasing popularity elsewhere, is still something new to Hong Kong. But Lutz-Christian Wolff, a law professor at Chinese University, has introduced the law faculty’s first such course and hopes to spread the idea across Hong Kong.

“The flipped classroom concept allows you to move your lecture modules, where you convey knowledge, to an online lecture,” said Wolff, who is also the university’s dean of graduate school. “That frees in-class time which then can be used for different, more comprehensive exercises and feedback.

“When students do more comprehensive exercises, they dig deeper, get more excited and have more time to work on particular issues,” he said. “They were much more active and into the course.”

Wolff’s idea of using flipped classroom started with his cross-border business transaction course, which is “very much based on skills training” such as negotiating with one another in real-case scenarios. Wolff soon found it difficult to deliver a lecture while allowing enough time for his students to digest the knowledge through practice.

“The problem was that there was too much to convey, but at the same time we wanted them to negotiate and draft, and to get feedback. It didn’t work, but the flipped classroom concept achieves exactly that,” he said.

In March 2014, Wolff started to apply “flipping” to two classes of students who took the course. The pilot project lasted two weeks.