Author: Ashley G. Thomas

Flipping the Classroom

Flipping the classroom is a relatively new phrase, it is not a new concept. The idea centres on reversing a traditional approach to teaching where students attend class to ‘receive information and get understanding’ and then do homework or coursework. In a flipped classroom, the information is provided before a class, these days often in the form of a video. Then the class focuses on students engaging with that information and working with it, typically in groups to discuss the topic concerned, collaborate and solve problems.

As indicated ‘flipping‘ is not a new concept and some teachers have been using technology for sometime to change markedly the nature of classroom sessions so that students engage in activities around some pre-presented information or knowledge (see for example Turning the Classroom Upside Down). In general the approach, whether referred to as flipping or turning the classroom upside down, supported the ideal of student centred, active learning.

Mobile Learning

The whole World has gone mobile crazy. So many people now have smartphones or tablets. Students often have more than one such device and they are very used to using them for social activities. Integrating mobile technologies into teaching can open up a range of learning opportunities.

For example the use of mobile devices can facilitate situated learning, where students in work or just out and about experiencing something related to their course, can easily record the experience or work activity and share this with others for discussion. In class various approaches to engagement, brainstorming in groups, in class voting can be done through exploitation of handheld devices and extraordinarily easy to use web based systems to support such activities.

The use of mobile approaches to learning can help students learn any time and any place and can form an important aspect of a flipped classroom approach to curriculum delivery.

Classrooms

A physical classroom is still where it ‘happens’ most often for university and college lecturers. That almost private, very personal space within which a relationship between a teacher and many students is so crucial to student learning and to the teacher’s personal fulfilment and enjoyment.

Good things can happen in a classroom without any ICT or AV (audio-visual) tools but normally these days a teacher will tend to use slides coupled to a projector screen. Of course they can also now make use of the internet in class and show videos and websites. That’s great but what is perhaps not so great always is the fact that the content displayed is against one presentation wall and a session can become one long presentation, with not much intervention or interaction from the audience.

In SMART teaching a classroom will see much greater participation from the students. They will tend to work in groups more and they will use technology for a variety of meaningful reasons, including at times presenting to the rest of the room. But the technology in a SMART classroom is not just about ICT and AV, it is also about the furniture in the room and several ‘basics’ such as writing surfaces and lighting.

So what’s wrong with online learning?

Online learning has been with us for a long time and has obviously led to major changes in the way that distance learning courses have operated. However there has always been the conundrum of how best to integrate online learning into the activities of universities that are campus based and teach primarily in physical classrooms. The reality of blended learning at most universities has in the main been little more than online Word and Powerpoint files made available as a supplement to lectures.

Sadly such exploitation of such powerful technology has inevitably not moved universities forward much in terms of changing the predominant learning and teaching paradigm of lecture, seminar, assessment.

In SMART teaching, online learning is central and something that feeds into and can actually take place within the physical classroom, so as to enhance the student learning experience and the teacher’s teaching experience.

What is SMART Teaching?

‘Smart teaching’ is a phrase we use to represent changes to teaching practices and processes underpinned by technology, new, different physical spaces and an interest to use more flexible, adaptable approaches to curriculum delivery.

The use of technology is often key in ‘freeing’ teaching from the constraints of place, time and paper and when combined with innovative use of physical space can help teachers to work with students in more flexible and mutually beneficial ways.

‘Flexible or adaptable teaching in an organisation encompasses:

  • a range of ways to deliver classes face-to-face
  • changes to the way teachers interact with students in class
  • changes to the furniture and other tools within a classroom
  • integration of online learning with what happens in the classroom

We start here

Hallo and Welcome,

If you reach this blog then you will hopefully be a teacher in a University or College and like us you have a desire or interest in how to exploit some of the wonderful new ideas for teaching that are linked to new technologies.

This blog will not just be about technology however. It will be as much about the interaction of people, students and teachers’ inside and outside of a classroom.

It will be about how to make sense of technology in teaching at a time when most of us still want that hard to replicate face to face classroom experience.

Looking forward to your views and comments.