Flipped classrooms: Using Google Groups to facilitate in-class communication

Abstract

This report describes two mandatory one-semester ESP courses (English for InternationalRelations) offered to second-and third-year undergraduates at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) enrolled in the selective "international relations" track. The second-year course deals with topics related to jobs in international relations and the third-year course with topics related to recent issues in international relations and diplomacy. The common objective of both courses is to give students as many opportunities as possible to practise communication skills in class, and, at the same time, to make English use part of their everyday lives. This is achieved thanks to a Flipped Classroom (FC) model of instruction which is precisely where the novelty of the course lies. Although the report does not thoroughly detail course design and evaluation procedures, it could prove valuable to those willing to develop similar courses. The report also includes the results of a post-course survey which provides useful information to the course designer for future revisions (and an example for those who wish to evaluate similar courses) but does not make it possible to draw more general conclusions about the FC model as the response rate seems quite low (34%, that is 24 participants out of 70 students) and therefore does not allow for generalizations. 2The Flipped Classroom model is one of the possible implementations of what has been termed "blended learning", an educational approach which combines face-to-face sessions with online activities (Graham 2006). However, the FC model of instruction blends face-to-face and online activities in a very specific way as "activities traditionally conducted in the classroom (e.g., content presentation) become home activities, and activities normally constituting homework