In the 21st century classroom, the flipped model of learning is more and more used in language teaching, but it’s a model that is sometimes hard to adapt for literature classes. I would argue though, especially in STEM-oriented Research 1, but even in liberal arts colleges, that we can benefit from the flipped classroom model in terms of context, especially when teaching pieces of literature that are related to experiences outside of the classroom.

The first time one of my students mentioned Jean de Lery must have lied in his travel account of his time in Brazil in the mid-1550s, because he could not possibly have seen people being possessed by demons, I realized I had to give students a bit more context on what the world looked like in the 1500s, and so I used Keynote’s integrated record feature to produce mini-movies that guided students through historical presentations that, while they were important, were also not necessarily the best use of class time.

These movies are also handy to jog students’ memories–even when I have presented some of the information in class, they can rewatch it at their own rhythm, and the title cards make it easier for them to navigate the movie.

Here are examples of this: one is my introductory lecture to a class I taught at Cornell, The Cannibal and the Explorer, a Freshman Writing Seminar that explores the evolution of the genre of travel writing, and two opposing figures featured in many pieces, the cannibal and the explorer. The class covers the early modern and modern eras, and discusses authors as varied as Jean de Lery, Montaigne, Voltaire, Diderot, Jules Verne, Joseph Conrad, etc, as well as Leon Poirier’s movies The Black Cruise and Brazza, or the Epic of the Congo. The two lectures below are meant to introduce students to the visual culture of our subject, as well as to some historical facts–so there is some simplification required, but I wanted to be as thorough as possible in giving them a short introduction to, in particular, the impact of travel literature and the figure of the traveler in the 1800s.

Sometimes, I also use videos for lighter purposes. I have found in particular that the students we currently teach to have a highly visual universe, and so instead, or rather in addition to, giving them a book on style and formatting, I sometimes put together short videos of things that are my “pet peeves”, such as this one, which incites students to stop using “aussi”, as a direct translation of also, at the beginning of sentences:

Similarly, I produced this video in a class concerned with pop culture–it was meant to teach students about style and formatting in essay-writing:

In the past I have also used teaching videos put together to help students review pronunciation for the oral exam. In one institution I worked with, students were in the majority low income, and often did not buy the (expensive) textbook, but the oral exam relied heavily on the possibility that they could use the vText to pronounce things. In order to help with inclusivity and equity, I recorded myself saying “type phrases” with the help of a roommate of mine at the time, EJ, who is also a French-native speaker, but from a different region of France.

In class, students were introduced to our difference in accent by listing to us pronounce different words. In this video for a 101 sequence, EJ and I are having a conversation about class and introductions.