Ben R. Atkinson

During this Week 7 Reading Week of the EDU720 module, I was able to put my free time to good use in working towards the first assessment task to deliver my flipped learning activity with students and write up the required evaluation for submission. I was pleased that my delivery of the flipped learning activity fell during the reading week, as it meant I could devote much more time to the activity and the associated evaluation.

When devising and running my flipped learning activity, I took a lot from the approach of Aaron Sams and the idea of project-based learning, which I’ve called Flipped Learning 2.0. Aaron suggests the assessment ‘is not the dessert, it is the main course’ (Aaron Sams – Flipped Classroom: The Next Step, 2015) which I think is a great quote and one that both conveniently summarises many of the issues with assessment and feedback in teaching and learning (namely that they are not embedded into the module at an early stage) and provides solutions. It’s something that MacDonald touches on also when she suggests the most important point for students to understand when engaging in flipped learning, is ‘what it is they are expected to learn, how they are expected to get there and in what timescale’ (Macdonald, 2006).

Continue Reading

This week has been very useful in terms of helping me to further develop ideas for my flipped classroom approach and consider how to create successful podcast resources.

Thinking about the specifics of producing podcasts for the flipped learning activity, I found the resources from Katie Gimbar and Andy Peisley to be very useful in helping me to further develop my ideas for the podcasts in my flipped learning activity. As Gimbar points out ‘it’s you delivering the lecture information. Someone else is not giving the information in your classroom’ (Gimbar, 2011). I found this point to be very interesting as it suggests that there shouldn’t be a differentiation between the practitioner in the classroom and one presenting/delivering the podcast – they should be one at the same person. At first, this makes perfect sense, but when you consider in more depth there are many examples of podcasts and video resources where the presenter puts on a voice or tries to be something their not. Peisley picks up on this point in the guidance podcast for this week’s activity, suggesting that actually ‘making a bit of a fool of yourself is also helpful’ (Peisley, 2019) – it shows the students that the podcast is real, you are you and the students feel relaxed that, as Gimbar puts it, the ‘language is similar, you can say things in a way that you like them to be said. You can ensure the students relate to this’ (Gimbar, 2011).

Continue Reading

The focus of the second week of study on the EDU720 module was the idea of ‘flipping the classroom’ a well-known blended learning approach which turns the traditional teaching model on its head and provides more time in class for discussion, with students having completed certain reading/watching/ listening tasks at home in preparation for the module.

I have a good understanding of flipped learning and its approach, given that I am a Learning Technologist and I support a number of academics across the College of Arts at the University of Lincoln with employing this technique in their teaching. There are a number of examples which I can draw upon from my own experience, and I expressed these in the first discussion task where we were required to explain our own understanding and experience of flipped learning. In this way, I think I engaged well with the task of the week – to gain an understanding of how the flipped classroom approach works.

Continue Reading