New way of teaching is flipping remarkable

WHEN I started lecturing fulltime five years ago, I knew what everybody knows: that we all learn better by doing. I knew that active learning – doing anything apart from just talking – is the way to go.

I’d also been introduced to the flipped-classroom concept, an idea that has taken North America and western Europe by storm.

The flipped classroom means turning traditional teaching upside down. Instead of introducing concepts in class, then sending students off to do homework, you make them do some online work first (introducing themselves to the basic concepts) and use class time to tackle complex questions, working in small groups.

Despite this, I started off lecturing the way I was taught. The sage on the stage, presenting PowerPoint lectures to students silently taking notes.

Neither I nor my thirdyear students in a marine and freshwater ecology course speak English as a first language. And I was teaching this course in rural QwaQwa in the Free State – quite a distance from the nearest ocean.

After a year, I put my trepidation aside and tried a partially flipped classroom, hoping to boost my students’ learning and experience. The results, documented in an article in the Journal for New Generation Sciences, have been encouraging.

The approach is less common in Africa; my research turned up almost nothing. There are probably several reasons for the slow uptake. Academics on the continent don’t often have access to the technology to create videos. Our students are not technologically savvy, nor many lecturers. Students come largely from poor educational backgrounds and are used to a particular way of learning.

Using technology in science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) education is a popular and effective way of boosting learning. But the vital aspect of a flipped classroom is combining technology with collaboration.

Yes, students use technology to become familiar with complex concepts. True understanding, though, comes through interaction with each other and with the lecturer in the classroom.

I decided not to flip my entire course. I kept using PowerPoint presentations for much of the sixmonth semester, but picked a few key concepts I’ve seen students struggle to understand. These became the focus of my flip.

I either found or created videos that students had to watch before class, making sure they did this by posting easy quizzes on a blackboard – an online platform on which course material, videos, quizzes and so forth can be placed.

About 30 minutes of lecturing time were given over to worksheets that required a collaborative think-pair-share approach.

A question was posed for each student to think about and answer individually. They paired up to discuss their answers. Then they were asked a second question – closely related to the first – which they had to consider alone again. This ensures students can mentally translate the discussion into their own words, in the same way they would have to to answer questions during an exam.

Students loved the partial flip. They talked more and asked more questions; they requested more videos and blackboard quizzes.

Their marks suggested the videos helped: those who watched them beforehand had significantly higher marks for the initial question during think-pair-share. The sharing – talking with a friend in one’s mother tongue – made an even more profound difference.

On this rural campus, with faulty internet and often uninterested students, I found they really engaged with complex ecological material. Even more remarkable was they could understand concepts such as the Coriolis effect and rocky shore zonation patterns, without having seen the ocean.

Since that experiment, I’ve used partial flips in all my courses. I challenge other academics to try it.