Instructional videos as part of a 'flipped' approach in academic writing

This paper reports on a project in which students watched short instructional videos on aspects of academic writing as part of a 'flipped classroom' approach at an English-medium university in the United Arab Emirates. The authors present the video tutorial project in the context of the flipped classroom, and evaluate student satisfaction with the video input. The findings suggest that although most students liked watching the videos at home, and found the input easy to understand, they still felt the need for teacher explanations. One conclusion from this study is that students are not yet ready for a complete flipped classroom in which all the input is given through the video. In this context, a mix of video input and teacher explanation is more appropriate.