In July 2015 I had the pleasure of facilitating a workshop on Flipped Learning at Capturing HE-ness: A Teaching and Learning Conference to Enhance College-Based Higher Education, which was hosted by the University of Greenwich Access and Partnerships Unit for our Partner College Network.
Before my workshop there were two keynote sessions that helped to inform conference attendees about notions such as students as partners, flexible learning, and academics as facilitators of learning. These concepts were later reiterated during the flipped learning workshops.
In the opening keynote, Professor Mick Healey talked about the necessity of treating students as partners in learning and teaching. He remarked that this is one of the most important issues facing higher education in the 21st century, claiming that partnership is understood here as essentially a process for engaging students, a way of doing things, rather then an outcome in itself.
Professor Healey offered an overview of various ways to engage students as partners in higher education (Figure 1), drawing from the 2014 report he published with Abbi Flint and Kathy Harrington, Engagement through partnership: students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education. He followed this up with an interesting discussion of several case studies.
For the second keynote, Dr John Lea provided an overview of college based higher education and progress so far, including scholarly activity in teaching and learning.
He adapted Boyer’s four scholarships (Figure 2), highlighting the fact that academics don’t have to be a ‘scholar’ in all of the four dimensions of scholarship, especially considering that most HE college-based academics have limited time. He then opened a discussion on whether is it more important to get staff involved in scholarship, or students?
Dr Lea explored how the four scholarships related to the concept of students as partners in learning, as discussed by Professor Healey. Students need to develop critical minds, and academics should facilitate and encourage their thinking. It is important to acknowledge gaps in the knowledge held by academics, and to consider them and students as co-creators and producers of learning. In this way, the scholar mode of thinking begins as soon as academics and their students are exposed to learning concepts, and all hold the mantle of scholarship in this exchange.
Dr Lea also talked about value of deep learning and active learning, which require both academics and students to be scholarly, referring to the HEA document he produced with Mick Healey and Alan Jenkins (2014), Developing research-based curricula in college-based higher education.
Both keynotes were truly inspirational and they certainly sparked interest and many discussions during the lunch break, a dynamic and discursive atmosphere which happily continued into my workshops in the afternoon. The participants were asked to work in groups and brainstorm answers to the following questions, taking notes on a Padlet board (feel free to add more comments) to the following questions:
1) What do we mean by Flipped Classroom
2) What do we mean by a Flipped Academic
3) How does a flipped classroom impact on students’ learning?
Their answers provided a basis for deeper discussion, during which participants could share their experiences (if they had any) as well as their thoughts and concerns when thinking about embarking upon a flipped classroom approach.
If you would like to discuss any of the approaches or ideas covered in this post, to see how you could apply them in your own teaching, please contact us at: greenwichconnect@gre.ac.uk