[biotech]

There is plenty of research that supports alternative teaching methods. The problem is, success in these research studies does not always generalize well to classrooms around the world. There are a few reasons for this, I think.

- When these methodologies are applied at the college or graduate school level, you have a bunch of students who are experienced and skilled at learning in the traditional lecture format. Changing that up in the final years of their educational career is not always going to be successful.

- Anecdotally, many teachers report that less motivated students may fall way behind in alternative teaching methods.

- Not all teachers are adept at teaching using alternative or "flipped classroom" methodologies.

- When students have a bad teacher, the consequences of that are much much worse in flipped classroom than they are in standard lecture format. A bad lecturer will usually still get a certain amount of information across, but a bad flipped classroom facilitator can result in an entire class learning essentially nothing from a course. So there is significant risk to implementing alternative classroom methodologies.