The Flipped Classroom, Lethal Mutations, and the Didactical Contract: A Cautionary Tale

The flipped classroom model interchanges the roles of in-class and out-of-class time to allow students more time to engage with cognitively demanding tasks when expert help from their instructor is more available. An extensive body of literature supports the effectiveness of this model. In contrast, I present a case study of a less-successful model: the instructor did not attend class sessions, which were instead staffed by three graduate teaching assistants. Students reported dissatisfaction with this model; they believed that the instructor breached the didactical contract. I propose that this case represents a lethal mutation to the flipped classroom model.