The HERESA community is proud to announce the launch of HERESA Café, a series of pop-up conversations with pedagogic experts around themes in teaching. Ahead of the first HERESA Café, which will take place on 5th October from 10:00 to 11:00 (South African time). THENSA interviewed Dr Elina Botha from Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK) in Finland, whose institution will lead an exciting session on the Flipped Classroom.
Over the last few weeks, the HERESA training team held discussions over how best to disseminate knowledge on pedagogic topics in higher education. The outcome of these exchanges has been the creation of the HERESA Café, a series of virtual pop-up conversations in which HERESA pedagogic experts will present a specific topic to the HERESA community and answer relevant questions that arise from those sessions. Inspired by the methods used in Dialogue-Inspired Learning (DIL), the HERESA Café will give members the opportunity to address pedagogic concerns in an interactive forum.
Led by educators from the Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK), this inaugural HERESA Café session will focus on “How Not to Slip in a Flipped Classroom”. For over a decade, the Flipped Classroom method has been a popular form of teaching amongst schools, universities and even tech companie which have used flipping to encourage more activity-based learning amongst their students and employees. Questions such as “Am I ready as a teacher or institution to start Flipping?”, “Is my teaching subject suitable for Flipping?” and “Do my students and teachers have readiness for Flipping?” have been asked by teachers and educators across the world as they contemplate whether this mode of teaching is suitable for their classrooms and lecture halls.
On behalf of THENSA, Khanya Mtshali, our Media Liaison Officer, spoke to Dr Elina Botha from TAMK over Zoom to unpack what we can expect from the HERESA Café on the Flipped Classroom. Dr Botha is a Senior Lecturer in Midwifery at TAMK where she has taught for the last decade. She previously worked as a midwife and IVF nurse, and her passion is to mend what is broken between parents and babies. Dr Botha received both her PhD and Masters in Health Sciences from TAMK and is considered an expert in the fields of education, digital learning, health promotion, innovative pedagogic solutions, project work, as well as sexual and reproductive health. She spoke to us about the Flipped Classroom, the logistics of using this teaching method for students and educators and how it has interfaced with the COVID-19 pandemic and other issues in higher education.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Khanya Mtshali for THENSA: Afternoon Dr Elina Botha and thank you for joining us today.
Dr Elina Botha: Thank you so much for having me.
T: In the world of education, there has been much discussion and debate about the definition of a “Flipped Classroom”. But for the uninitiated, could you briefly explain what a Flipped Classroom is and why it makes for an interesting first topic for the HERESA Café?
EB: Yes, thank you. That’s a very good question. I know when I have found some information regarding the Flipped Classroom, there are a lot of definitions of it. A few years ago, it became a bit of a trend in the education sector here in Finland. Traditionally, it was seen as flipping the classroom around where normally you would have students arriving at the lecture, getting the lecture in a lecture hall or room then going home and doing homework and studying further there. With the Flipped Classroom, it meant that students would have their lectures as recordings or videos before the lesson would start, and they would listen to their lecture or watch videos and then come to the teaching session which becomes more of a discussion together with the teacher. Basically, it was seen as the students learning things beforehand and before the teaching session so that when they arrive, the teacher can bring the subject further. However, this was how it initially started. It was the traditional thinking around the Flipped Classroom. But what I see in my work and the work with my colleagues is that the Flipped Classroom has taken on more variation. It is not as simple and structured as it once was. I believe that a trend can start to become dull and boring if we are always following a strict rule and never modify it to the students’ needs. So we have to listen to what they need and how they learn best. I use it quite a lot in my work but also quite differently to the traditional way.
T: In the seminal text, Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day, Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann, two key figures in the Flipped Classroom movement, write that the Flipped Classroom is not a “synonym for online videos”, emphasising that “it is the interaction and the meaningful learning activities occur during the face-to-face time that is most important”. In your view, why has the Flipped Classroom model been conflated with students watching videos on the internet?
EB: It is understandable if you are not thinking about how to renew your teaching constantly. If you start to follow a rule or guideline without actually being student-centered or learner-centered, then it doesn’t work anymore. With any innovative pedagogics, if you have a course to teach or a lesson to teach, you have to think what serves that purpose best. You should not go with pedagogics first and decide this is how we do it but rather, you should go with the students and learners first. You have to decide what are the goals of this course, session or lecture, where do you want to take the students and then start choosing your pedagogics. As someone in the health sector, I see pedagogics as a balanced meal. You need all kinds of ingredients for it to be nutritious to your body. You need proteins, you need fats, you need carbohydrates. This helps me paint a good picture of what I believe education or pedagogics needs to look like. You need a little bit of Flipped Classroom, you need some videos here and there, you need the books because students still need to read books by themselves, you need exams but in some cases, exams are not the most appropriate way of testing knowledge. For the teaching to be interesting and serve the purpose of that course, you need to use a variety of pedagogic methods.
T: What are some of the advantages of activity-based learning for both students and educators?
EB: I think the best thing about this kind of learning is that the learners are in an active role. It is about their learning and them taking responsibility for their learning. I see myself as a facilitator and a coach so I support and boost. Sometimes I have to hold back, sometimes push forward, sometimes I have to pull the students to the side. My job is not to stand in front of the classroom but rather to walk around it and sometimes go to the back, even in higher education. It allows me to keep tabs on my students and evaluate the situation all the time. Nowadays with online learning and teaching, it has become difficult because you cannot read people’s micro-expressions. I have to ask myself constantly, “Is this sinking in or not?” or “Are they too tired or hungry?”. I have to adjust the lesson because I believe that is my duty.
T: The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many educators and scholars to reimagine existing pedagogic methods, ideas and innovations. What are some of the conversations you and your colleagues have had about adapting the Flipped Classroom model for these unprecedented times?
EB: For online learning, what we have done for a year and a half is to equip our students with the skills to do the learning before the lecture. In these settings, the online lecture is just the tip of the iceberg. We also do want to rely on recordings too much because we also want to keep some of the interaction going. So even if it is online learning and interaction is more difficult, we still try to maintain some of the spontaneous discussions because we teach subjects such as ethics where there are not so many absolute truths. It is something that we learn through listening to other people and discussing topics together which builds on our knowledge. As a teacher, I do not have absolute truths which is why discussion is so important. In smaller groups, it is possible to keep them quite interactive but the larger the group is, the more it becomes challenging. It can cause students who are not as vocal to become more passive so that is why we are happy to start, slowly by surely, moving back to classroom teaching, where we can have a better activation which is important to this method of teaching.
T: The Finnish education model is known for placing an emphasis on collaborative learning and Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK) is an institution recognised for promoting progressive ideas in education and for its use of the Flipped Classroom, amongst other teaching methods. If possible, could you unpack your institution’s history with the Flipped Classroom model?
EB: I have been at my institution for ten years so I cannot speak very far into that history, but I believe my community of colleagues are open to trying new things. We have used problem-based learning, for instance, as part of the activating of pedagogics. The Flipped Classroom is almost like one tool in that toolbox that we use daily. More recently, we have been using it more with online learning so we have practised it now more than ever before.
T: The corporatisation of the university has seen an uptick in the amount of work expected from both academic staff. These conditions have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic where the amount of preparation for online lectures and tutorials, for instance, has risen in the midst of budget cuts across departments, retrenchments of support staff and a slight decrease in the overall student population. How does the Flipped Classroom interact with the current realities in higher education?
EB: That’s a very good question and we also feel the strain. The way I think about it is that we have to trust our students. We cannot do the learning for our students which means we have to give that responsibility to them. Unfortunately, that also means we have less and less teacher-led classroom sessions and more and more independent studies. We have to do direct independent studying so that the responsibility of the hardest work is not on the teacher, but the student. We also try to be clever about it by having variety in our assignments but they are easy for the teacher to check, for instance. We use a lot of peer evaluation because when you evaluate, you learn. Our thinking was why don’t we make the students evaluate each other’s work because that is how you learn. I have even had a whole course where I have given all the subjects to the students to teach each other. So I sit in the back of the classroom and do what is essentially my most important job which is continuous assessment. I can sit in the back of the classroom while I watch the students do teaching or even lectures for each other. It means that they have to find out about the subject and perform research. They have to think about the way that they deliver their message and ask themselves, “Is it interesting or creative?”. They might have made some videos beforehand. I also encourage my students to use humour in their teachings because I strongly believe in fun learning. I have found that placing trust in my students has worked out a lot better than what I expected. Believing in their process and taking a step back to only do assessment means I am doing my core job. Sometimes a teacher is doing investigative work or reading an extensive amount of things but I thought, “Why am I not giving this to the students?” because I was learning so much while preparing for a lesson. In Finland, we have this saying that we have to throw the ball to the students, trust the process and focus on what we can do, which is assessment and evaluation.
T: Technological innovation seems to form an important part of the Flipped Classroom model. This makes it difficult to implement in certain institutions in the Global South where infrastructure, resources and access to different forms of technology is still somewhat lacking. Do you think that the success of the Flipped Classroom is contingent upon an institution, country or student having enough access to the right infrastructure and resources?
EB: No, I do not believe that. The way I use the Flipped Classroom is to ask my students to read the textbook on the subject before the next lesson. So I tell them to read first. I love having my students read books because I believe there is wisdom in the written word. Reading content with even two sentences can contain an abundance of knowledge. It still needs to be the basis of learning. I might encourage them or give them a task to read about a specific subject extensively beforehand. It can be a book or it can be online material. A lot of books are also online. In the health sector, we have a lot of recommendations that are published by the World Health Organisation (WHO) or the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) and so on. Those organisations have made that material available to everyone. So I ask them to study those materials beforehand and then when we are in the lesson together, we can go into greater depth in the subject. We can apply what they have observed to cases because sometimes I will have prepared patient cases or situations so we can sit and solve them together. For example, how to treat cancer patients. Because they already have that theoretical understanding from the readings, during the lessons, we can solve the practical problem together. So I do not believe technology is that integral to the Flipped Classroom. Currently, I have an ongoing online course and I have applied Flipped Classroom to that course which means that I give the students the specific subject that they have to study by themselves. I might not prepare the material for them because I trust they can find it themselves and be critical about finding the proper resources. They study the theory first and then when they do the online assignments, they are mostly cases where they apply the knowledge they have gained. For example, how to write a letter for a mother who is pregnant and smoking. So they need to have the knowledge first, for instance, the background of the mother who is smoking, and the task is about writing the letter to the mother to make her understand the risks of smoking to the pregnancy. I’m using Flipped Classroom in complete online learning where I have no lectures and very little resources because I believe they need to practice finding the materials themselves. I give a lot of responsibility to the students.
T: Lastly, what would you like participants in the first HERESA Café to take away from the session on the Flipped Classroom?
EB: I hope that everyone can recognise the possibilities of using Flipped Classroom in their current work because it is so easy to do. Perhaps we can discuss the difficulties of implementing it together. But I also hope we can work together to figure out how to apply Flipped Classroom in their current positions as teachers whether they may be. I also hope we can also solve some of the more practical issues around how to apply the Flipped Classroom or would not work for my situation as a teacher. So really practical solutions, really. I’m also looking forward to sharing ideas as well as mistakes because I like to share my mistakes. It’s nice to laugh about them and make sure someone doesn’t make the same mistake! I think the HERESA Café on the Flipped Classroom can be the beginning of something really nice. It can be a new and inspiring thing for the teacher who knows they can actually affect these situations and make the students more interested and motivated to learn much better. I hope we can all motivate everyone and share some good ideas and enthusiasm so that this passion will flow over to everyone and encourage them to try new things because that is what it is ultimately about.