Flipped Class – EducationNextGen

The traditional way of teaching in the classroom is the conventional one where teachers (instructors) used to follow blackboard which is now being moreover replaced by power point presentations, audio-visual materials. Now a days even teachers are using freely available internet resources to conduct their classes. Flipping a class is the concept of inverting the traditional approach of learning and application of learning. The following activities generally involved while creating a flipped class:

• Providing study material to students (preferably video lectures created by instructors)
• Students prepare themselves to participate in the class activities before attending class.
• During the class time, instructors guide all the students to involve actively and interactively apply that knowledge along with clarification of doubts.
• After the class, students check their understanding and extend their learning.

Using this approach, an instructor can play a vital role of guiding students to think about a problem deeply and apply their learning at higher level. The main idea behind the flipped classroom is to create interactive learning environment where each and every student along with the instructor participate to apply the concept and engage themselves creatively in the concept. There is no one model for this though we can have the following framework

 

Figure : Flipped Classroom Framework

In the above framework, Flipped classroom technique is used alongwith educational technology and learning through activities like PI(Peer Instruction) and TPS(Think-Pair-Share) in the class room which creates a better and influenced learning environment.

Some of the benefits of the flipping a classroom are as below:

• The idea of flipped classroom involves more engagement of students than a traditional classroom so it keeps a student more engaged.
• This model uses the point of view how a student can learn best and apply the knowledge during hands on activities during class through activity learning. Instructor can provide immediate feedback to the students that helps to improve their learning.
• As we all know, students do not learn at the same pace which is a difficult factor in teaching to deal with. The idea of flipping a class gives an instructor more ways to interact and work with the students directly which also gives a clear idea to the instructor about various learning styles of students, so they can give instructions accordingly.
• Students can learn and work at their own pace.

Some of the useful tools for the flipped classroom are:

• Camtesia
• Wikispaces
• Edmodo
• Moodle
• Poll Everywhere

One point to note that as a instructor, flipping our classroom means a lot. We need to completely re-think how to do the job we have done in certain ways for so many years. This may be the case why would any instructor bother?

Flipping a classroom is not easy as it involves many steps which requires planning, creating short video lectures, Peer Instructional activities etc. along with the use of many online resources. It may not be for every educator because of having lot of extra work. But enough of the educators that have tried flipped classroom are having success. Finally, I request all educators to try atleast once in the forthcoming semester. 

Mr. Deepak Sharma

Assistant Professor

Dept. of Information Technology