Week 2:Forum, My Response

• What previous experiences have you had of ‘flipped classroom’ or other blended learning approaches, as an educator and/or student?

• How was the students’ learning supported by this approach?

I do not have personal experience teaching a flipped classroom, although have taught lessons which have both synchronous and asynchronous aspects, all online.  With my personal online lessons, I have structured my planning and timings for asynchronous learning material for my students around a practical lesson because of my own experience with learning on a creative course during my undergrad and postgrad studies.

For my course, I email all the worksheets, visual and written step-by-step workshop activities that we will be doing together, calculations and equations for working out, and further reading which can be of interest. After my practical workshop, I email a recording of the zoom lesson for students to watch back, slides which contain specific artists names of interest to contextualise, and provide a further worksheet which allows students to use what they have learnt, and scale up for future personal projects.

By giving more factual information to students to pre-watch or pre-read satisfies the Susan’s of the class and supports constructive alignment (Biggs and Tang 2011: 52). It also gives students confidence in what is to come in the practical workshop.  This adds value to the students learning and allows them to see the end goal if they take in the information in the lesson. Biggs, J.; et al. (2022) writes about the importance of role models for students to aspire to, to motivate to potentially acquire deep learning outcomes.

Students were further supported by this structure by giving them opportunity to email further questions before, during or after the practical face-to-face online synchronous workshop.

In September I am due to carry out my first flipped classroom, based on this previous purely online lesson, so am interested to see how this module can develop its planning.

References

Biggs, John and TANG, Catherine. 2011. Teaching for Quality Learning at University. 4th edn. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Biggs, J., Tang, C., & Kennedy, G. 2022. Teaching for quality learning at university (5th ed.). McGraw Hill.