PASSIVE LEARNING to ACTIVE LEARNING - My Pleasant Experience with FLIPPED Classrooms at Siva Sivani Institute of Management (SSIM), Hyderabad.

“Flipping the classroom is more about a mindset: redirecting attention away from the teacher and putting attention on the learner and the learning.” ―?Aaron Sams,?Flip Your Classroom

Dear Fellow Educators, being in academics for a period of two decades I can confidentially state that there is a great positive shift in the learning abilities and attitudes of the young generation. I still remotely remember that when I have joined this profession of being an educator, I thought that participants in the class were at the receiving end and I was at the givers end. At that point in time, I was feeling that I am required to share the ‘Knowledge’ in the classroom and at the end of the term I have to evaluate/assess student’s level of learning. But after a long stint in this field now I feel that I am required to properly and purposefully ignite the young minds on a certain topic and the students have the willingness and ability to learn by research. I see a drastic shift in the learning interests and learning approaches of the young minds. I feel happy and proud for this shift of learning attitude. I also feel that I am a educator at a point in time where I myself am learning through students.

After observing the changes in the learning attitudes for over two decades, I personally feel that the students (more specifically at the master’s level of education) have moving away from ‘Passive Learning’ to ‘Active Learning’ processes. The paradigm shift is also due to the change in the mindset of regulators, administrators of academic institutes and also the major players viz. teacher/faculty. Now the faculty are trying to provide a platform for students to explore and synthesize the concepts with real world situations. Russell (2021) states that as against the traditional learning, active learning involves students-led classrooms where the teacher is ready to listen to what students are learning. In the case of traditional classroom, teacher decides and directs the class towards topics to be learnt. One of the major distinctions between active learning and passive learning is that, in the case of active learning the faculty encourages the students to question the existing body of knowledge and come out with alternatives. Flipped classrooms are going to take us away from traditional didactic lecture approach which was more of absorption concept to active inquiry concept (Loughlin, Warburton, Crane, & Sammels, 2016).

In this backdrop, I myself have experienced success with flipped classrooms.

At my B-School, Siva Sivani Institute of Management, few of the faculty have started using the flipped classroom concept to the core and we found the desired success. Moving towards flipped classrooms was not a quick short-term decision. As an institute, the academic leadership felt that select faculty would first experiment with the idea (to be specific I and two more faculty were taken for the experiment). Later after assessing the pros and cons along with the assessment of expected results we wanted to make it a part of regular curriculum.

One of the reasons for thinking seriously on flipped classrooms was that during lockdown due to pandemic, students and teachers were more into online teaching and learning, which was by nature a static and somewhat boring process. Once the educational institutions have reopened, in line with other management institutions SSIM also wanted to bring in some dynamism into the classrooms. The academic leadership at SSIM felt that along with role-play and case study-based pedagogy, we should also put systematic and research-based steps towards making the classroom student-centric. This has led us to flipped classrooms idea. Flipped classroom by very definition is considered to be active learning space (Ozdamli & Asiksoy, 2016). Flipped classrooms are a way to make classroom lively, flexible, active, effective and finally student-centric teaching and learning strategy (Nouri, 2016).

The first step we took to move to the culture of flipped classroom was to find the research-based literature on pros and cons of flipped classrooms. The reason why we at SSIM were more focused on research-based literature was that we were not fully clear on what kind of preparation was needed for creating the eco-system and content for the students such that they perform well during the flipped class sessions. Yildirim & Kiray (2016) have stated that content of the flipped classroom should revolve around models such as problem-based learning or project-based learning. The teacher/facilitator should be having a clear and documented expectation out of the content that is prepared for the flipped classroom. Apart from research-based work, we were also looking for other prominent works on flipped classrooms. Opportunely, we found a well-structured book titled ‘Flip Your Classroom’ by Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams (2012). The book has given treasured information and we added few more research works in the process to school ourselves in the domain of active-learning practices.

We were also looking for inputs on issues such as ?the duration of the sessions, classroom management and also the evaluation formats for the flipped classrooms. By interacting with the experts in the field we were able to come to an initial consensus. We have agreed that after two cycles of flipped classroom experience, we would finalize on the finer points such as duration of the session and so on.

The first and foremost challenge that we I personally faced was that, the students initially did not understand the model of flipped classroom. The students felt that I was avoiding my duties and trying to put pressure on them. Initially my own mentees have expressed displeasure by stating that flipped classroom are a pressure on them. However, I was able to see the positive results coming after fourth session (I have allotted 10 classes for flipped sessions) where the students started enjoying the process. One good point I noticed was that students felt happy when they were successfully answering the critical questions of the peers. Students who successfully communicated and convinced their peers felt that they were the highlight of the day. I too encouraged this keeping motivational issues in mind. Simultaneously I also improved my skill of classroom management and content preparation.

One major issue before anyone has to move to flipped classroom is that they should be open-minded and flexible with respect the students’ initial attempts as a teacher. Once we (teachers) and students see the positive results, everything get into place.?My observations says that the students who took flipped classrooms seriously have topped in assessments and also are a pride to SSIM in the form of getting good placements. We made a point to get a survey-based data on how students perceived the process of flipped classroom. The results showed positive vibes but long way to go. Even though we have seen good results, I feel we have to go many steps ahead to achieve the fullest results of flipped classroom approach and active learning concept ?I want to experiment with many other innovative models of active learning but I believe in the mantra of slow and steady wins the race!

I personally suggest that fellow educators also experiment with flipped classroom in a systematic manner and reap the benefits. If you guys have done more creatively, I personally am open for learning innovative and productive teaching & learning practices. Thanks for the read and Good Bye for Now!

References

Bergmann, J., & Sams, A. (2012). Flip Your Classroom - Reach Every Student in Every Class Every DAuy. International Society for Teaching in Education.

• Loughlin, C., Warburton, S., Crane, S., & Sammels, W. (2016). Towards Active Learning Spaces and the Flipped Classroom Model. University of Surrey, Guildfor, UK and Jam Tree Office, Harpenden, UK.

Nouri, J. (2016). The Flipped Classroom: For Active, Effective and Increased Learning - Especially for Low Achievers. International Journal of Education and Technology in Higher Education. doi:https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-016-0032-z

Ozdamli, F., & Asiksoy, G. (2016). Flipped Classroom Approach. World Journal on Educational Technology, 8(2), 98-105.

Russell, K. (2021, June 2). Active vs. Passive Learning: What's the Difference? Retrieved from Graduateprograms: www.graduateprograms.org

YILDIRIM, F. S., & KIRAY, S. A. (2016). Flipped Classroom Model in Education. Research Highlights in Education and Science .