Hoping to increase student engagement, the author decided to re-envision his course on contemporary global issues in a "flipped" format. The results proved encouraging--to a degree. Over the course of five semesters, applying lessons gleaned from the literature, students learned how to read challenging texts outside of class and undertake interdisciplinary research appropriate to their academic level. Students also reported higher levels of engagement, a fact their improved work supported. But the author cautions against attributing this success solely to flipping. In fact, much of the progress he describes owes more to his employment of a diverse array of active-learning strategies. Flipping, by itself, did not prove to be an effective model.