Flipped Learning
Continuing education online is a new and challenging experience for all us. The same is true for many universities world wide. We are aware that both faculty members and students will need support during the transition. What we need to keep in mind is the most important point is to be in touch not only for educational purposes but also to maintain a supportive community for faculty and students alike.
Moodle is our major course management system, and Zoom is available for synchronous communication with our students. Zoom related tutorials and frequently asked questions are available at zoom@bilkent website.
We believe that it is time to switch to “flipped learning”, which involves students getting their input (readings, lectures etc.) outside class, thus freeing up class time for class discussion and groupwork. This method has significant advantages and also some difficulties. The major difficulty is ensuring that all students participate, firstly by performing the out-of-class activities (e.g., reading a text) and secondly by contributing to class activities (e.g., discussing the text).
Short videos about flipped learning by Jon Bergman, the father of the method and founder of FlippedClass.com:
“Designing a Flipped Class Lesson”
The most important points to bear in mind when starting are:
- Keep everything simple;
- Focus on student learning and their involvement;
- Communicate with your students via email and try to respond to your students within 24 hours;
- Provide resources like reading materials or videos to watch on Moodle; provide activities (forum discussions, debates, quizzes) on Moodle that stimulate student involvement;
- Have a video conference session for question and answer.
- Take students’ feedback into account and learn from their own experience of online communication.
Later on you may…
- Let them prepare short presentations and record their presentations
- Let the students to give live presentations using Zoom.
- Split up for group work within Zoom.
- Set up debates on Zoom.