Innovators like Amazon and LinkedIn may be at the bleeding edge from a corporate perspective when it comes to flipping the format of their meetings, but they are laggards in the big picture.

Academia has been leading the way with flipped classrooms for the better part of a decade.

The flipped classroom concept came about to solve a problem as old as education itself – how to effectively teach an entire group when individuals learn at different speeds. After centuries of the classic “lecture & homework” system forcing fast and slow learners alike to adapt to the pace of the teacher, a new model has emerged.

In a flipped classroom, students review each day’s lesson before class. Teachers assign reading selections, often coupled with short lecture presentations recorded ahead of time with software like Panopto. This allows students to take as much time as they require to learn each subject – rereading materials and rewinding the video whenever they may need.

In the classroom, the teacher acts as guide for the now-prepared class to engage in discussion and work on their daily assignment (which would have been homework in the old model). Because they’ve had time to prepare, students are often better able to work through the activity—and always have their classmates as well as their teacher nearby should a question arise (rather than guessing later on at home).

The flipped classroom gives students the flexibility they need to take in a lesson, then makes the best use of class time to ensure students can think through their work, check with peers, and discuss ideas with their professor.

Best of all, flipped classrooms actually work — studies reports that reviewing materials beforehand and turning a lecture into an interactive working session yields statistically significant improvements in engagement, test scores, and overall long-term learning.

Amazon, LinkedIn, and hundreds of other intelligent organizations around the world are putting the flipped concept to work for their meetings—isn’t it time your company did too?

Ready to get more out of your meetings? Download our latest free white paper, “Turn Your Meeting On Its Head: A guide to flipped meetings” today.