– Hi, everyone. I’m Niya Bond, the Faculty Developer here at OneHE, and I’m so excited to be joined today by Alexandra Mihai. You have so much experience as a professor, researcher, faculty developer, but I’m gonna let you share your bio currently as it is with our community, if you would, Alexandra.

– Thank you very much for invitation. It’s really nice to chat. I’m Alexandra Mihai. I’m an assistant professor at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, and my job kind of combines faculty development with teaching and research. So about half of my time, at least on paper, should be spent on supporting faculty, developing their courses, aligning curricula, or everything that’s related to faculty development and for the rest, of course, teaching and research. So yeah, happy to talk about all those aspects.

– Wonderful. And today, we’re talking about a timely topic that kind of spans all those areas, the flipped classroom. Now, if you would, for those who might not be familiar with that term, could you kind of offer a definition of what a flipped classroom is?

– I was actually thinking about that. I’m sure there are many definitions you could Google and find immediately, but I thought I’d just share what I think or what the core idea for me is about flipped learning. So, I think basically it’s all about making sure the time used in classroom, online or virtual or face-to-face, is spent effectively. So we don’t have that much time, right? We know that learning doesn’t happen only in the classroom. These are the sort of principles we have to operate with, but that’s a reason why we should really think of ways to make that limited time either precious time really, really well. Well, to use it well basically, to use it effectively. And that’s why we need to flip or we could flip parts of the learning to different other media so or to different other ways of learning. And that’s what flip learning means for me. So using the time together, teacher and students, students and students, in an effective way. And that means, basically, that the knowledge acquisition part, mainly, would be referred to the time before class. Now, okay, it can be again online or face-to-face. So, I don’t, just refer generally to class or classroom. But the idea is that, in order, to make the time in classroom more active, more interesting, even more fun, there is stuff that we need to do beforehand. And that stuff can be done, of course, there traditionally also, students need to come prepared. So, there is not that much news to that.

But the flipped classroom, in my opinion, makes that even more important. So there needs to be real effort put both by teachers and students in this time before class. And technology can help a lot here, because flipped learning is also very much referring to use of technology. And the technology really can help because okay, even if we meet in the classroom twice a week, once a week, there is quite a lot of time that is still I would say unaccounted for, but basically dedicated to self-directed learning, How that happens? If that happens, it’s usually a black box. What flipped learning tries to do is make use of or make us use this time, this black box, better by giving, providing resources. That’s the basic, but it’s not only about providing resources. It’s actually about scaffolding how students learn using those resources in this time before class. And that’s what flipping it means for me. We are not gonna broadcast knowledge during class, but students are expected to absorb this knowledge from various sources in different ways through different exercises before class, individually or collectively, with a tutor help, or with less tutor help, or no tutor or teacher help. So this is essentially what flipped learning means to me, and it can really take a variety of shapes. We can get into that.

– Yeah, so the idea of scaffolding the knowledge acquisition, you mentioned it can take many different shapes. Could you talk a little bit about some of those and what makes that different from say like traditional knowledge acquisition and scaffolding?

– Yeah, so because most of it, and nowadays I would say even all of it has at least a basis online in the LMS. So usually, that’s where all the resources are posted anyway. I think it just shouldn’t stop at that, and many courses just stop at that. Okay, we provide resources. You have either a reading list and you can go to the library and find your resources or we provide resources on the platform itself, and that’s it. And we expect everyone to come prepared to class. So, that’s the more traditional way of doing it. I would say what a real flipped classroom means is having students actively engage with those resources by supporting them. So providing context, providing scenarios, exercises where they can already practice using that knowledge. It can also be providing structure. Let’s say, if the knowledge that is in that part of the course is more complex, providing a certain structure, certain framework in which student that can help students make the necessary connections, because that’s also something that doesn’t happen automatically a lot of times. So providing, for example, a mind map exercise where students would have to already think about the concepts actively before they come to class or even having the exercise that I think I find the most common, having students prepare questions related to the text. Normally one would say that that’s a very traditional exercise, but even that means that students will need to engage with the material beforehand in order to form these critical questions. And last but not least, I think it’s not only the knowledge acquisition that we need to scaffold, but students also need or are developing skills in our courses. And I think that can also be scaffolded a little bit through this, flipping it and studying before the class.

Especially I mean the obvious one is self-regulation. So, that is a very important learning skill and that’s what we hope students will take with them after they graduate. But it is something that we can help develop of course through having them engage in a disciplined way in this self, well, in this individual study time. That’s one skill. But of course, for example, this critical reflection, critical thinking can also be something that is developed and that can be done, as I said, through the more traditional exercises, but also using for instance, AI. So, I would say you can do this both ways. So either have pairs of students question each other and discuss the material, but if that’s not possible and sometimes it is not possible, one exercise could be chatting with ChatGPT or any other tool about the text, getting some ideas, brainstorming, trying to better understand. Again, maybe the texts are really very difficult. So, why not use it as an explainer, as as a tool to help you better understand the deeper meaning, so that you actually come to class prepared. Not only knowing, but also being able to actively use the knowledge that’s already before class starts. And I think those, that would really make the time better spent than it currently is.

– Yeah, that’s wonderful and I appreciate those practical tips. Now, for me, this sounds exciting, and engaging, and motivating and like you said, an activity and skill building, but I have talked to other educators who worry about the, I guess, knowledge acquisition part beforehand, not being able to kind of check that. But you mentioned that there are things in place to check that so that you can come together and have meaningful, like interactive class time.

– Well, actually, I was making some notes and thinking exactly about that. So, I had a note for myself saying test it and then a question. And then, I thought the question would come up because obviously there, yeah, it, we come back to, again, this is not all new. We come back to the age old question, and the students don’t come prepared. So what, so no matter how many measures we take, how many exercises we put into place in this flipped classroom, if they come unprepared, they will come unprepared. And then, we still have to do the same things in the classroom. Again, this cannot fully be avoided. I think you can match this flipped practices with some amount of testing. Now, it depends a lot on discipline because some types of knowledge can be easily tested and say, “Okay, we have a threshold. If you don’t pass that, don’t even bother to come to class.” Other times, of course, it’s more about the way you engage with it before, if you are thinking critically about it, that already will help you. So, it doesn’t need to be that you have already acquired all the knowledge, but just the fact that you read it, you thought about it, maybe you discussed with someone about it, maybe you try to explain it to someone that will already help in class. Now, I think the most important thing is coming back to the course design and really linking those exercises with what we will do afterwards in the classroom. Because flipping has these two parts. We relegate some things to before class, but that means that we will make the class time even more active and interesting.

And that’s where the design comes into play. And that’s the link between the two is super important. Let’s say you do a simulation in the classroom and the students will have had to prepare. If they don’t prepare, obviously they will not be able to do anything in class. So having that sort of arrangement and of course communicating it to them, that’s, you know, crucial. But having that sort of arrangement where they feel, okay, the threshold is really high. If I don’t do the preparation, even without a test, I will not be able to do anything in class. So, that’s one way of linking it quite directly. How we do it, for instance, we, at Maastricht University, we use problem-based learning. So, there we have an active classroom at all times. So actually, even though we don’t use the flipped classroom as much as we could at the moment, I feel like still this individual preparation is very important because students have to, there are no lectures. Students have to work out problems by themselves in a group. And they start with brainstorming without having done the readings. Then, they go and prepare. And then, they come back and brainstorm again to find solutions. So that’s very, very briefly the framework. And they know that if they haven’t done the preparation, they will not be able to say anything in class. And that’s part of how they’re assessed and part of how they learn in our PBL environment. So again, it depends from the method used and the classroom environment, but you can really make that link very, very clear and also very explicit. So the link between what you do need to do before, even between this type of exercises that you ask them to do before as practice for what they will be doing in the classroom. So, I always felt that if the students understand the reasoning in our design and, you know, behind our decisions, they are more likely to really play along rather than if something is just a given to them in a syllabus and they don’t really understand why they are doing what they’re doing.

– Yeah, I love that and I love how transparency and kind of the teaching and learning interaction here. Well, it’s always important, but it’s important here because like you said, that’s also building a success skill, like being able to understand the how and the why, and then engaging in both, yeah. Okay, so say someone in our community is really interested in exploring flipped learning, where should they start? How should they start? Where should they begin?

– I think if you really are to start, let’s say from scratch with this approach, and you start it, the starting point is really important because the way you are currently teaching, the way your currently your course is set up, and also the environment in which it is the program in which it takes place, plays a very important role. So if I would say, let’s say, let’s split it in two parts because on the one hand, and of course a generalization. But on the one hand, you could start from a very traditional path. So, you have lectures. You might have some seminars. Yeah, I would say most universities operate in this way. And the other path would be the one I just mentioned from our case, because that’s something I’m more familiar with. And in these cases, I would say the link or the transition to flipped learning is a little bit different because you have to design it a little bit differently. But the starting point is the same. It is really analyzing your course, really looking into deeply reflecting both the content and the method. And really reflecting to that point, we actually don’t have time or don’t wait, make enough time to do this, because this would be a useful exercise regardless of whether we wanna switch to flipped learning or not. Understand whether the two match, whether the content of your course really matches the assign, the assessment and the teaching methods you are using. So this sort of alignment exercise or reflection is really important. And based on that, I think the next question, at least in my opinion, the next question would be how do students learn in this course currently? Where is the learning taking place and in which way? Does it take place mostly in the classroom? Are we asking how much teaching are we doing and how much learning is taking place?

I recently was reading some articles about the ratio between the two, and it was interesting. The research was, the conclusion was that the more teaching you do, the less learning takes place. So it’s quite interesting and I think it’s fascinating to look into that. Even for your own course, try to think of previous years, previous iterations, where did you feel learning happened and which methods you felt led to learning more. So of course then, you would need to prioritize those. Maybe you didn’t have enough time for those. Maybe you realize that you had one or two activities that really spurred students’ interest and they really, you really saw that spark, you know, where their learning really happened. Maybe they even told you this. But that was, you know, one hour in four weeks. So maybe what you would like to do is have more of those. Maybe not every week, but two or three more sessions of those. That implies that you will not be able to lecture as much. So that means you would switch from the, you would switch part of the knowledge transmission part to something else. And now the next step comes. Okay, something else, what does something else means? Do I just give them 10 books or 10 articles only or do I need to do something else? And here is the trick, because we feel like sometimes when we flip the sort of ownership towards the student, because in the end, flipped learning is not only flipping the time and the methodology, but it’s also flipping the ownership of learning to the student, making them more active in the background. But it’s not only more work for the student, it can also be more work for us, to be honest, at least when we first redesign it. Because it means, okay, we need to provide resources, but we also need to think of this scaffolding part that we were talking about earlier. How will they access those resources? How much time they need to spend with those resources? How deep they need to go? Can I provide some structure, some exercises, depending on where they are in their studies? Maybe in the beginning, more later on, less, and so on. So, make it almost like a asynchronous part of the learning, but, equally important, than the lecture or than the seminar that takes place in the classroom.

And also communicate that to the students. So, okay, we will this and this in the classroom, but in order to get there, this is a equally important part. This is not, well, some reading we will do in our spare time. This is part of the learning. The learning is now split into contact time, where we are all together and time that you spend with the readings, with the materials, by yourself, with our guidance, and perhaps with colleagues. Because sometimes collaborative activities can also work in this flipped area. So, I think it’s really looking at the content. Does it match the methods? Where does learning happen? How can you maximise those moments? And if you maximise those moments, what is the trade off? Where do you need to put more effort? And how evolved do you get in this self-study time where we normally don’t get involved in? That’s for the traditional path. I think the only difference for the problem-based learning or active learning path where where I’m working is that we do that active part anyway. So, I feel like we are missing an opportunity by not scaffolding the other part of the student’s learning, the self-learning, which is actually a big part of our approach. I mean, we do active learning in the classroom, but that doesn’t happen by itself. It will only happen if they come prepared and we don’t have a clue if they come prepared. So I think there it’s even, I think there the focus should be not so much on the resources, but really on the skills. Because when they’re in the classroom, they need to be extremely active. They need to chair discussions. They need to facilitate. They need to problem solve. And I feel in this flipped part, I would really add a lot of emphasis on those aspects as well. It’ll not only be, here are your readings and here is a structure, but it will be okay, try to form a group and pre-discuss something, and then see in the classroom if that matched what the other students are saying. So, it’ll really be putting them in an active situation already before.

– Yeah, well, I really appreciate that perspective and it sounds like, as you’ve described, a first step would be maybe to learn more about what this entails, and then to think really intentionally about why it might work for your educational environment.

– Yeah, definitely. Intentionally is a very good word here, I think. It needs to be intentional also because we need to put time and effort in it. So like all design changes, it won’t just happen by itself. And it also needs to make sense to be honest, because in not in all courses and in all disciplines, it makes sense. I’m against one fits all solution because we don’t have those in education.

– Yeah. Yeah, well wonderful. Well, I thank you so much for your time. This has been such an interesting conversation and I’m really excited to learn more about problem-based learning and flipped learning. It sounds like there’s a lot of overlaps and similarities there.

– Yeah, I think once I get to redesign my course, maybe I can share a little bit more on that particularly. But I’m very much interested in doing that, especially because I feel like we’re not using technology enough. And it would really support our students even after they graduate. They could really make use of what they’ve learned if they learn in the proper way.

– Well, it sounds like we have a future conversation to have.

– Yes, definitely. Yeah.

– Well, thank you then for time-

– Thank you. Thank you very much.