This blog post is part of the ‘Flipped Classroom Professional Development Series’.

Flipped classroom encourages deep learning. In today’s fast-paced world, students are confronted by an increasingly complex and uncertain future. How are we going to prepare them for these challenges? Flipped classroom might be the key.

What is ideal learning like? We may have different ideas in mind, but some key aspects of learning better include improving efficiency, effectiveness, quality, and perhaps satisfaction. One of our endeavours to ameliorate our ways of learning and teaching is employing the flipped classroom approach. “At HKU, flipping the classroom has been a grassroot movement of T&L change,” said Professor Ian Holliday in the Flipped Classroom Learning Symposium – Sharing of Pedagogies and Practices on December 6, 2017. In this blog post series, we will introduce key concepts of flipping with real cases in HKU.

The Flipped Classroom Learning Symposium – Sharing of Pedagogies and Practices, December 6, 2017.

What is Flipped Classroom?
Flipped classroom is “the practice of assigning lectures outside of class and devoting class time to a variety of learning activities,” (DeLozier & Rhodes, 2017, p. 141). Students take an active role in exploring new ideas, investigating complicated cases, constructing arguments, solving real-life problems, and creating a synergetic learning community with fellow learners. In a flipped class, “[students] are no longer recipients of just passive learning, but active shapers of their own learning and problem solvers in the class,” said Professor Holliday.

Flipping in HKU: A Grassroot Movement of T&L Change
In HKU, flipping the classroom has been a grassroot movement jointly initiated by practitioners in a wide range of disciplines. These pioneers showcased their fruits of their endeavours at the Flipped Classroom Learning Symposium, with more than 200 teaching staff and researchers from various faculties and institutions attending. In particular, they shared the highlights of their courses, and discussed the effectiveness as well as scalability of the pedagogies used. Students benefiting from flipped learning also shared their views in the discussion panel.

The Symposium at a Glance

• Welcome Speech
  Professor Ian Holliday, Vice-President and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Teaching and Learning)
• What is Flipped Classroom and Why We Flip it?
  Dr. Lily Zheng, Assistant Professor, Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning
• Classroom Flipping in CAES
  Ms. Heidy Wong (Assistant Lecturer), Mr. Sam Cole (Senior Lecturer) and Mr. Patrick Desloge (Senior Lecturer), Centre for Applied English Studies
• Flipping a Science Foundation Course – Experience and Challenges
  Dr. Rachel Ka Wai Lui (Lecturer) and Dr. William Man Yin Cheung (Lecturer), Faculty of Science
• Common Core: New Approach – The (re-)making of CCHU9001 ‘Designs on the Future’
  Mr. Mathew Pryor, Head of Division of Landscape Architecture, Associate Professor (Teaching), Faculty of Architecture
• Flipping a Classroom like Solving a Rubik’s Cube
  Professor Ricky Y.K. Kwok (Associate Vice-President (Teaching & Learning)) and Ms. Andrea Qi (Honorary Lecturer), Faculty of Engineering
• Flipped Classroom – Chest Pain
  Dr. Ming-Yen Ng, Clinical Assistant Professor, Faculty of Medicine
• Advanced Negotiations Simulation
  Dr. Courtney Fung, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences
• Flipping a Dental Classroom
  Dr. Michael Botelho, Clinical Associate Professor, Faculty of Dentistry
• Flipping a Large Class with Authentic Materials
  Professor Rick Glofcheski, Professor, Faculty of Law
• Student Panel
• Discussant Panel
  All speakers

Discussant panel

• Closing Remarks
  Dr. Susan Bridges, Assistant Dean (Curriculum Innovation), Associate Professor, Faculty of Education

Flipped Classroom and Deep Learning
Flipped classroom encourages deep learning, in contrast to surface approaches – a recurring theme in all presentations. In today’s fast-paced world, students are confronted by an increasingly complex and uncertain future. It is our responsibility as educators to prepare them for these challenges. Flipped classroom, an approach that facilitates deep enquiry, helps prepare our students for the future.

Speed, complexities and uncertainties are three major challenges that the current generation faces. In this digital age when information is at an arm’s reach, many students want to obtain more information in a shorter time. However, this convenient access to information may numb the need to deeply engage with the content, causing a shallow acquisition of information and sacrificing quality for quantity.

In a world that is moving increasingly faster, the job market is also rapidly transforming. Despite alternate opportunities emerging, the fast evolution of market trends and new technologies makes the future of the working world less predictable. It will only become more difficult for students to foresee and prepare for the future by the time they graduate.

Critical thinkers and problem solvers, however, will adapt to changes and thrive in every field. Deep learning is the key to help students become good problem solvers. In particular, we should

1. prompt students to interact with content and engage in deep enquiry
2. generate ample opportunities for meaningful F2F interactions with peers and the teaching staff.

How can we achieve this? Flipped classroom might be the answer, due to its emphasis on deep learning. Unlike traditional lectures where the professor stands on stage to deliver content, students in a flipped class enjoy substantial opportunities to actively learn through discussing and exploring with their peers and teachers.

“Flipped classroom is reacting to the issues of speed, complexities, and uncertainties in this modern world”, summarizes Dr. Susan Bridges in her closing remarks.

One step further
To further expand the flipped classroom movement within and beyond HKU, we have prepared a series of blog posts summarizing various key aspects of flipped classroom.

• Designing Your Own Flipped Classroom: Online and Pre-class Elements
• Getting Students Ready for Your Flipped Class
• Designing In-class Activities for Flipped Classroom
• Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Flipped Class

Check out also our newly developed online repository of case documentation, useful resources and research findings related to flipped classroom.

Interested in flipping your class? Contact us.

Reference

• DeLozier, S. J., & Rhodes, M. G. (2017). Flipped classrooms: A review of key ideas and recommendations for practice. Educational Psychology Review, 29 (1), 141-151. [Link]

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Registration

Introduction to the course (Course outline)
University Teaching is an introductory MOOC on teaching and learning in tertiary education, designed by staff at CETL and offered through Coursera. Whether you have just started your first university teaching post, you are thinking about becoming a university teacher, or you just have an interest in understanding the essentials of university teaching, this course is definitely for you.

University Teaching will help you to address the following questions:

• What is it like teaching in higher education?
• What does research evidence tell us about effective teaching in higher education?
• How can we ensure that our instructional design helps our students achieve their intended learning outcomes?
• What pedagogic options do we have to make our teaching successful?
• What assessment and feedback practices can help our students learn effectively?

With input from instructors, guest speakers and interviewees, including teaching award winners, students and experts in the fields, you will be exposed to research evidence in relation to effective university teaching and instructional design. Throughout the course, you will learn from teachers whose teaching has been judged to be excellent, and you will see many examples of their teaching in practice.

After completing the learning tasks in this course, you will be able to:

• Discuss the teaching and learning context in higher education and reflect on the challenges and opportunities you might encounter as a university teacher.
• Explain key teaching and learning concepts and relevant evidence in relation to effective university teaching.
• Analyse the relationships between various aspects of teaching and student learning.
• Identify a range of instructional strategies to support effective student learning.
• Apply key concepts to the structuring of course outlines and lesson plans in order to support successful student learning.

Join our professional development community on Facebook
Check out our University Teaching Facebook page for updates and extra content on teaching and learning!

We are excited to share some highlights of Technology-Enriched Learning Initiative’s (TELI) involvement in HKU The Review 2017!

#Innovative #Testing New Waters

TELI Vision
Online content and new technology are becoming ever more prominent in university education, creating alternatives to standard lectures such as flipped classrooms. TELI strives to help teachers explore new ways to teach. We support and promote e-learning across HKU, for example by developing games and apps with teachers and producing online learning materials. We also:

Produce courses

• Eight Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) through the edX and Coursera platforms in 2016-17
• Six on-campus Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs) that blend MOOC-style online learning with on-campus classes

Collaborate

• A University Grants Council (UGC) funded project to produce 10 SPOCs with three local universities, namely the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The content (general education or common core-type course) will be shared among the four universities.
• A new mode of collaboration: a commission from Mass Transit Railway Corporation to produce videos about its operations for public consumption.

Encourage innovative teaching

• Professor Ricky Kwok (who oversees TELI) launched a summer edition of his Common Core course, Everyday Computing and the Internet, creating an opportunity for students to experience flipped classroom in Peking University. It was a brand new experience for our students. It included three weeks online learning and two intensive weeks at Peking University with Mainland students.

Want to know more about e-learning or teaching in innovative ways? Contact us at enquiry@teli.hku.hk! Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

“To provide a more effective learning experience, you have to adapt course material for a new generation. They are learning in a different way than we did in the past,” said Mr. Chia-Wei Wu, Director of Learning Sciences and Technologies of School of Dental Medicine, University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), in the seminar “Penn Dental Medicine Academic Initiative and the Influence of Technology Development in Medical Science” on November 7, 2017. In this seminar, Mr. Wu shared his successful experience in changing the teaching and learning environment at UPenn DMD programme, through introducing iPedagogy and incorporating the latest technological approaches.

Mr. Wu introducing iPedagogy to HKU students and staff

iPedagogy at UPenn DMD
Four technology-empowered initiatives have been introduced to improve student engagement and facilitate teachers in monitoring students’ performance:

• The iPad initiative
  • Starting from 2014, every newly admitted DMD student from School of Dental Medicine is given an iPad and they are required to bring the iPad to school on a daily basis for learning. Several apps essential for learning have been remotely installed for easy access to course information and materials. Students can keep the iPads even after graduation.
• iBooks
  • An e-book app, iBooks, was introduced as an teaching and learning platform in the DMD programme. It allows teachers to conveniently import teaching materials. Traditional textbooks used in the programme have been converted to an electronic format with better visuals. iBooks also enables students and teachers to access content of different media types at the same time, such as instructional videos, course schedules and published journal articles. Interactive online worksheets and quizzes are also included in the app. Furthermore, students can download the most up-to-date version of course books through iBooks anytime anywhere. What is more, email notifications are automatically disseminated to students regarding course content updates. As of this year, 24 electronic textbooks are now available on iBooks and most of them are clinical manuals and course documents for the 4-year study programme.

  The visual and graphic presentations of iBooks of DMD programme

• Online lectures
  • Tailor-made online lecture videos have been designed to cover various topics in one learning module, which concentrates the course, making its content more concise and efficient in content delivery. While using the iBooks app to watch lecture videos, simultaneous note-taking is also supported, hence students do not have to keep jumping from one app to another to jot notes. According to the feedback of course teachers and students, online lectures enabled them to have much more time to engage in in-class discussions*, as students are required to familiarize themselves with the course content by watching lecture videos before coming to class for in-class activities.
• Gamification
  • Merging game and studies – Various interactive platforms, such as Poll Everywhere and PaGamo, are used to engage students in classroom activities. Students’ feedback showed that they were very content with the use of games to learn as well as study for tests.

Success of iPedagogy
iPedagogy in UPenn received wide acclaim from students and academic staff. Students found that learning with iPads greatly enhanced their lab experience and practice, since they could easily refer back to demonstration videos and chapter content during laboratory experiments. They found carrying their iPads rather than heavy textbooks to class much more convenient. Teachers also noted that technology stimulated students’ in-class engagement – students were more likely to participate in anonymous polling and other interactive online activities in lectures. In addition, it was easier for teachers to closely monitor students’ performance and their learning progress with a centralized learning platform, so they could adjust their teaching plans and improve the syllabus conveniently.

On top of pursuing academic achievement in university, proficiency in technology literacy is an important skillset that students should acquire in university education nowadays. You and your department can take an initiative to make a change in your school! Contact us if you have an idea in mind.

Further reading

1. Debbie Goldberg. “Academic Initiatives: Penn Dental Medicine Furthers News Aspects in Curriculum, Technology and Wellness.” Penn Dental Journal, Fall 2016, p. 32.

Contact us: enquiry@teli.hku.hk

Thinking of incorporating technology in teaching but not sure where to start? We are here to help!

The TELI team, together with Information Technology Services (ITS), Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) and HKU Libraries (HKUL) endeavour to provide diverse and extensive e-learning support services to teachers.

Our team specializes on providing

• support in instructional design and content production, such as developing Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs), flipped classrooms and instructional videos;
• pedagogical support in e-learning;
• support in using e-learning technologies in teaching, such as mobile applications, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), Moodle, e-portfolio, etc;
• professional development training for teachers;
• data analysis for teaching and learning.

You may also reach out to:

• CETL for face-to-face professional development training;
• ITS for Moodle-related enquiries, classroom lecture capture services and any technical enquiries in general; and
• the Libraries for Turnitin- and Endnote-related enquiries.

Empower yourself. Empower HKU. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you are looking for ways to innovate your teaching!

You may also download the PDF version here.