A flipped course is one where usually not much lecturing happens. They expect you to do a threshold of studying before coming in and then you usually do other activities in class other than just sit down and be lectured at. If you ever visit Emory, you should be able to visit or see the room where this happens (it has many round tables). I’ve witnessed how it works for these sections, and usually the instructor may quickly review some concept or solve a problem and then pass out a worksheet with mixed difficulty problems or higher level application types. The tables have numbers for the teams that work the problems together (I think the professors who use this method, like 3 of them) use graduate students to facilitate. This takes some getting used to as many students are used to being told to do things or just sitting and writing notes, but when done decently is more effective at building higher ordered skills (as in, when instructors ask more applied problems on exams, more students will be successful).
The initial reaction of a student in these courses is that “they don’t teach” (I suspect this comes from students expecting to get away with doing nothing before coming to class and ultimately expecting the instructor to expose them to knowledge for the first time which really isn’t a good expectation in a challenging college course where the reality is…the tests don’t come exactly from the books or lectures as they were presented so you have to spend much more time studying and thinking about them on your own regardless of how well the instructor lectures)…however lecturing is not really equivalent to teaching because students, in problem-solving oriented classes (at least what are supposed to be) like chemistry, are not really learning but so much from lectures. Students get more from struggling with the problems together and then having the professor to demonstrate how to think through it (that’s how it appears to work. They let the tables tackle the problems for a while, and then the instructor will finally work them instead of students watch the professors work a limited amount of problem types on a board first and then they go try other problems at home, or then go on to blame the instructor for “testing problems never done in class” which technically they are supposed to do, at least at a selective university. However, this is frustrating if a student has never tried high level problems under supervision). Students who don’t plan to study frequently before exams or who view teaching as the instructor lecturing will not be a fan at first. However, the grades apparently show that it may work. The flipped teachers right pretty challenging exams (one is actually much harder than previous years) that require much better conceptual understanding (when they lectured, tests were much more math based and often didn’t involve as much higher level problem solving the first semester. Goes to show you that lecturing is often more conducive to memorization of facts and processes than really understanding them and being able to think about and apply them to something new) than in the past and the averages have remained the same and in the case of one section (whose section is usually known as the hardest) has actually shown quite a bit of improvement (though some of it may be due to selection effects). This suggests that it is achieving its goal.
Physics and math- Physics 141 (the algebra/trig based one that most pre-meds take) usually has the most awesome instructor, but then 142 has someone mediocre or bad. You can maybe get two “high mediocre” (It means they are good enough to make you learn something, but nothing special) if you take the calc. based series (151/152). Math, try coming in with an AP calculus credit so that you only have to take the life sciences calculus class or simply skip lower division calculus courses altogether if you have enough credit (like a BC credit) where you can maybe take a course like multivariable or differential equations where it is more obvious who is a decent professor and who isn’t. Unfortunately, with the single variable calc. series (111/112 at Emory) at many elite schools, it is kind of this throwaway course that receives little attention because only certain students take it. Those interested in more math intensive majors or math itself usually get to start at more advanced levels and choose that pathway. Emory follows this trend by sending tons of graduate students to do this (also common at other elites) and they usually end up on the easier side but their teaching is all over the place and since there isn’t any RMP information on them, you are naturally taking a gamble unless you sign up for a select few that are known to be good or for the few sections run by an actual faculty member.