Over warm cups of coffee shared over three different continents, members of the HERESA community came together to talk about the Flipped Classroom model for the first HERESA Café.
The inaugural HERESA Café got off to an exciting start as members of the HERESA community gathered to discuss the topic, “How Not to Slip in a Flipped Classroom”. Hosted over Zoom, the chosen medium for this virtual coffee shop, academics from more than 15 institutions listened to the “baristas” for the session, namely pedagogic experts and innovators from Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK) in Finland, share their knowledge and experiences using the Flipped Classroom. According to Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams, widely regarded as the founders of this teaching model, the Flipped Classroom is a “framework [or pedagogical approach] that ensures that students receive a personalised education tailored to their individual needs”. Instead of the traditional mode of teaching where an educator delivers a prepared lecture to students, the Flipped Classroom encourages students to engage with and research the lesson before class, allowing for more critical, collaborative, contextualised and specific learning to take place in the classroom amongst their peers. In her introductory remarks, Dr Elina Botha, Senior Lecturer in Midwifery at TAMK, emphasised that the most important feature of the Flipped Classroom was to “activate students for better learning experiences”. In addition, she stated that while her colleagues aimed to challenge traditional teaching and strive for change in classroom practices, they also “learnt very strongly from their mistakes” as teachers.
Following remarks from Drs Jiri Vilppola, Mari Leppävuori and Paula Ranne, who provided additional information on the Flipped Classroom, the Café was divided into breakaway groups, where participants had the opportunity to pose questions, comments and concerns on the topic at hand. What came out of those breakaway sessions were honest, informative yet relaxed discussions on some of the benefits and challenges of implementing this method of teaching in the classroom. Members from South African institutions pointed out some of the obstacles to using this model in their classrooms where the social, cultural, economic and institutional norms are different to Finland and other countries in the Global North.
There were also debates on whether the Flipped Classroom is a defined extension of student-centered learning, a pedagogical model that has been around for decades. Some of the other themes that emerged from the breakaway groups included defined learning goals versus self-motivated learning, infrastructure and the readiness of teachers and students to deviate from traditional teaching methods, the existence of large class settings in South Africa and how that influences the decision to flip a classroom, university cultures and different levels of scaffolding, the necessity of accessible and affordable learning materials and the work required to adjust the attitudes of teachers and students.
At the beginning of the session, Dr Sershen Naidoo, Project Manager for HERESA, said that HERESA Café was not designed to be a “symposium, colloquium, conference or stakeholder agreement, [but] a conversation”. Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the session was that the use of the Flipped Classroom in South African institutions will be just as much about unlearning as it will be about learning. Indeed, members of the HERESA community emerged from HERESA Café with an enhanced understanding of the Flipped Classroom and a curiosity to explore and experiment with this teaching model in their respective classrooms.
As our community plans for the next HERESA Café, it is clear that the combination of brilliant minds in this informal yet engaging forum, will brew some interesting conversations.
Written by: Ms Khanya Mtshali (THENSA Media Liasion)