Switching to flipped classrooms – one and the same training challenged by practitioners and students

By inverting the knowledge transfer process, flipped classroom trainings promise a richer learning experience and, ultimately, an enhanced learning process. The objective of this article is to present design guidelines that help lecturers make their flipped classroom trainings more user-centric. We take an accounting information system (AIS)-related lecture at a university as our case example and consider two types of learners for the same training, that is practitioners and students. Significant differences emerged. For example, practitioners cherished self-contained learning at their own pace, whereas most of the students asked for a motivated lecturer to give direction. Our results are clustered threefold: (1) User perception – getting the method right is as important as the content; (2) Lecturer – developing soft skills beyond mere knowledge transfer; (3) Technology – setting the scene properly when switching to flipped classroom trainings.