1. What is Flipped Learning?
Flipped Learning is a teaching-learning method that reverses the traditional education system.
Learning is defined as a product of experience and a relatively permanent change in behavior. (Gagné & Driscol, 1988; Ertürk, 1986; Fidan, 1986).
Eric Mazur, a Physics professor at Harvard University, defines learning as a two-step process. The first step is knowledge transfer (transmission of knowledge from the source of knowledge to the student by means of their professor and different resources) and the second one is the internalization of knowledge by the student.
In the traditional education system, faculty members are given the easy task of transferring knowledge to students in the classroom, while students face the difficult task of completing assignments and internalizing knowledge alone. In the Flipped Learning model, knowledge transfer to students takes place prior to the class through course videos prepared by the faculty members and supporting materials such as articles, Excel sheets, pdfs, visuals, images, and PowerPoints. This means that the direct instruction moves from the group learning space to the individual learning space. The resulting group space is transformed into a Flipped
Learning environment which is dynamic and interactive where the professor guides students as they apply concepts and engage creatively in the subject matter. This allows students to internalize and develop their knowledge – the real essence of being a learner – in the classroom in collaboration with the professor and classmates.
2. How does Learning Take Place in Flipped Learning?
Traditional Method: As we all know that in traditional educational method, the students experience the topics at school in their classrooms. The teacher presents the topics in the classroom, gives some tasks to the students to do at home , then the reinforcement of the topics is realized at home , which is the most difficult part of learning and the students become alone in this process.
Flipped Learning: In this method, the knowledge is also transferred to the students by the teacher, too. However, it is possible for the students to study complementary materials at home such as videos, microsoft files, PDFs, images, pictures and presentation tools (Powerpoint, prezi, emaze) which are prepared beforehand by the teacher. The students can study these materials at home whenever they want to study. They can keep in touch with their classmates and also their teacher online, they can ask questions to the teacher online and can start discussions with their classmates. The teacher can supervise and control whether the videos, the PDFs, all the online documents that he/she shared with them, are covered or not with the help of online quizzes.
The Teacher: The teacher is not the one who tells, presents the subjects but he/she is the one who is the leader of the process of discovering the knowledge. Briefly, the teacher becomes a professional learner.
The Student: The student is not the one who gets the information in a passive way but the student takes the role of being one who internalizes and develops knowledge actively. In short, the student becomes an amateur learner.
3.How does Success Take Place in Flipped Learning?
- Students learn, revise and review the course material at their own pace.
- Each student has a different learning style. In the traditional method, the professor cannot respond or relate to all of these styles. Flipped Learning enables students to watch the lecture on video at his/her desired speed, stop, re-wind and replay it if necessary.
- Since the lessons are structured in an interactive, reciprocal and applied way, it is easier for students to grasp the topic
- Students do not remain passive in the class as they are truly in charge of their own learning through teamwork; all students naturally participate in the activities.
- Students co-generate new knowledge through collaboration and discussion.
- Students who miss a class due to medical reasons or due to required sport and student club activities are not left behind.
- Course materials are always available in the online platform. The students may revisit previous content and review them whenever needed.
- There is more interaction and personal contact between the student and the teacher.
- Students have more responsibility over their own learning; all students are active in the classroom.
- All students receive one-to-one, personalized instruction.
4.Advantages and Disadvantages of Flipped Learning
Advantages for the Students:
- Flipped Learning increases the skills of higher-level learning.
- Flipped Learning enables students to learn at their own pace.
- Flipped Learning gives an opportunity to learn from each other, work cooperatively and collaboratively.
- Flipped Learning increases the awareness of responsibility for learning.
- Flipped Learning enables to learn in advance.
- Flipped Learning gives students opportunity to take part in practices.
- Flipped Learning improves the ability to make comments and critical thinking.
- Flipped Learning enables students to reach the knowledge whenever needed.
- The teacher applies the higher-level cognitive tasks in the lessons in accordance with the Bloom Taxonomy.
- The teacher communicate with the students online and answer their questions.
- The teacher starts online discussions among the students.
- The teacher gains a good and collaboartive communication with the students.
- The teacher works with the students one -to -one and in groups.
- The teacher solves the problems of negative behaviours of students .
- The teacher saves the time and space for learning.
- Some problems may occur because of technical infrastructure.
- If the reliability of materials prepared by the teacher is not checked, the information may be misleading.
- 5.Web 2.0 Tools With Flipped LearningWeb 2.0 tools are widely used in every area nowadays, especially used in communication among people. We, as educators , need to guide our students to realize the learning activities. It is essential that we combine web 2.0 tools with Flipped Learning. . Below you will see some tools that can be used with the Flipped Learning Method.
When you put Flipped Learning into practice, you can use one or more of these web 2.0 tools.
Educreations: You can create an online classroom and prepare your material, lesson contents with Educreations. First of all,you need to sign up for Educreations and whenever you sign up, you will have your Whiteboard. You can add images, write some texts,and record your voice while preparing your materials. You can add your students to this online classroom on Educreations, or you can give the code to your students to enter the online classroom.
Blendspace: You can use this tool as an online bulletin board.You can add your materials which you would like to share with your students such as powerpoint, pdf, images,or word files even your whiteboard from Educreations on Blendspace,on your bulletin board. Blendspace is suggested for Project Based Learning.
Flipquiz: You can create a funny learning environment with this tool. Flipquiz creates your own gameshow-style boards . You can create a Jeopardy-like game to review concepts with students with Flipquiz. You can prepare six categories and five questions in each category in a game.
Padlet: You can also use this tool as an online bulletin board for multipurposes.You can use Padlet for a brainstorming activity or for preparing reading lists beforehand the lesson. Think about putting posthitis on your bulletin in your office. You can add link, image, video and text on these posthitis . You can also save your virtual board as a Pdf or Excel document on your computer.
Todaysmeet: This tool does not require any registration and helps you get feedback. Todaysmeet can also be used as a brainstorming activity.
Movenote: This tool is also useful for Flipped Classrooms. You can upload your lesson materials such as videos, slides, even your own videos recorded by you while presenting the subjects.
Zentation: You can upload your lesson video tutorial on Youtube. You can prepare your powerpoint presentation related to your topic. Then search for the site of Zaption, paste the youtube link, then upload your powerpoint presentation. Click ‘My Accounts’, edit your powerpoint presentation. In this edit part you can edit the time of your slides.In the end if you want to share your presentation, click share and make it public. - Flipped Classroom Practive Exam
- At the end of this course all participants are required to take the practice exam in order to get the certificate.
- Trainees need to prepare a lesson such as a video, a voice recording,pdf about any topic they want. They need to embed this material on the padlet below.
- Trainees need to show these materials to his/her students ten days before the lesson. You need to make the students watch and cover these course materials. The plan of this needed to be embeded on Padlet,too.
- Trainees need to organize a one-hour online meeting three days before the lesson.
- Beforehand the lesson, the students need to ;
- Watch and cover all the lessson materials before the lesson.
- Organize his/her ideas about the topic and prepare his/her questions about the subject.
- Come to the class to find the answers of these questions.
- The students have concrete questions. The questions and the answers are recorded. It is uploaded on Youtube with private settings, and the link is embeded on the PadleT
- Etwinning With Flipped Learning
- eTwinning, as it is known, is becoming more and more important in the field of Information Communication Technologies, and as a result of that , education has rapidly leaves its classical, space-dependent structure, and reaches a position where knowledge has spread and spread more rapidly and new information has been instantly delivered to all countries. Education gains more and more universal aspect with the help of technolgy-integrated-system thus it enables to carry out collaboartive projects among European countries in the world, as ar result, this leads to remove the borders in education.
eTwinning,with this aim, encourages school collaboration in Europe by facilitating the establishment of short and long-term partnerships in schools by providing the necessary support, tools and services through the use of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies). eTwinning is an opportunity both for the students to get to know each other thanks to European projects and for the teachers to be a part of European teachers community.
It is aimed that young European citizens communicate with each other with the idea of pairing cross-borders schools,which is the crucial purposes of etwinning. Teachers from all participating countries can register etwinning and they can use etwinning online tools to find each other, meet online, share ideas, team up in groups, learn from each other in learning events, and join the projects.
The Flipped Learning method is well aligned with Project Based Learning. As for the teachers and for the students, if Flipped learning is implemented in an etwinning project, we can realize that it improves the students’ higher-level of cognitive skills,students can reach the information easily whenever needed wherever they are, students take part in practices and activities actively, students and teachers communicate online and discuss about the topics online ,ask and answer about the subjects; and thus they increase the ability of sharing and spreading the knowledge.