Thanks Emmanouil, much appreciated... but, it seems that some higher education institutions are thinking of going forward with this methodology no matter what! thinking of cost may be!?

I think it is an interesting concept to investigate further for higher education. The technology is available to make content available to students and then to re-structure what might be considered as traditional lectures into more interactive workshops. The difficulty of course is ensuring that the students engage with the content (which may be more theoretical in nature) prior to coming to the workshop. Without this the more interactive workshop is not successful.

Thank you Emmanuouil and Kevin for your responses - I totally agree, this methodology of teaching and learning is very difficult when you do not have those motivated students in the class... indeed, it takes you time to convince the students that you are not the 'talking head' in the room, and they need to be prepared, engage with the facilitator and learn from each other... !!! long way to go... to change the mindsets of the students...

I was speaking today with an Honors student investigating teaching practice in flipped classrooms. Her comment was that a similar amount of student conversation occurred in both the flipped and traditional classrooms. However, in the flipped classroom the kids were discussing the problems based on the work they had done at home whereas in the traditional classroom the kids were talking about anything but the problem they had just been set by the teacher. My sense is that, as in most things in education, that the teacher is the key - there is a significant amount of letting go needed in managing a flipped approach. It is where the rubber hits the road in terms of many of the terms that we can tend to pay lip service to in education - constructivism, student directed learning etc. Easy to say, harder to implement. Just some thoughts!

Kevin - thank you - great thoughts.

Agree, it depends on the course subject as well as the subject of the week. I have seen that by having students watch videos I am able to have much more in depth discussions during class, and that students ask much more detailed and probing questions when we go over examples in class.

Well, do you ask them to watch video in the class - or before they come to the class in preparation.

Regards

Theodora Issa