Flipped learning in an online environment

Flipped learning is something that I did not have a lot of opportunities to experience especially in an online environment. Strategies that I’m aware of are for the traditional classroom and they cannot be easily transferred to an online one. Nevertheless, in some sense online classroom resembles the flipped one as students learn majority of the materials by themselves and then they complete necessary assignments. So in my opinion the best strategies would be the following:

1 Since an instructor is not physically present in an online course s/he needs to let students know about the goals of the flipped lesson/unit and the expected outcomes. Knowing why they are expected to complete the assignments in a certain way will facilitate their understanding and increase their motivation.

2 I would make the materials for independent study as comprehensible as possible and present  them in various formats (printed, audio, video). This way students can choose most suitable for them format and learn the necessary information.  However, I would present only the main concepts leaving some questions open to trigger their interest for inquiry.

3 Even though students are supposed to learn the offered materials on their own I would still suggest create small peer studying groups. By studying together students will have a chance to try to clarify difficult for them questions.  If synchronous meetings are integrated in an online course then such group discussions could be offered first 10 minutes of the class. If there are no synchronous sessions included then such short meeting would be scheduled by the instructor.