Nicki Newman
University of Birmingham
n.l.newman@bham.ac.uk
Before the pandemic and the move to blended or hybrid teaching I had used flipped teaching on large modules, 300 students. Even with that number, I could still do small group work, even in a large lecture theater with a lot of students. I used some high technological solutions, whether that was using apps like Padlet, or sharing online documents and some low tech solutions such as whiteboards and flipchart paper.
Problem
When I first started teaching, I did more traditional lectures and in the first few years, I stuck to my lecture slides and notes, but once I became more confident with the material, and students’ questions didn’t phase me, I wanted to throw things open to students more.
I taught an introduction to marketing module, both undergraduate and postgraduate, a very similar module on both programmes. I was finding on the postgraduate module, where the majority of the class were international students, they were not really understanding what to do with the content, while on the undergraduate module, a good number of the second year home students struggled too. They were finding it much more difficult to understand the concept of applying theory to an organisation and analyzing what organisations were currently doing, to work out, for example, what are the pricing strategies that companies are currently using. They were very good at describing to me what the price was and what the product looked like, but struggled to identify the strategies or analyse the design. My first solution was just to explain more, provide more examples, and I had good feedback for my teaching but this didn’t translate into students’ understanding of how to do their assessments.
At around the same time, I was getting multiple requests to audio record my lectures, although this was before the use of lecture capture.Therefore, I ended up with rows of dictaphones in front of me and I thought there had to be better options. In a more traditional lecture, even if you stop delivering your content and do activities, it still doesn’t give the international students time enough to digest the content and to think about it, they’re too busy trying to write down everything that you’ve said and they feel like they are missing parts of the lecture.
Solution
For my flipped learning, to replace the traditional lecture content I created short videos just explaining the strategies and the concepts to them. These were to be used alongside the textbook. In the lectures, I wanted to spend more time on practice-based active learning with them doing tasks, practicing applying the concepts, and working on the activities that they would need to do in their assignments.
The pre-recorded online video content allowed the international students to listen multiple times, go back and review, at their own pace. They still made notes, but were able to pause and review, and then follow up on any missed points or questions in the lectures.
I then had a lecture of up to 200 students who were just doing activities. I put them into small groups in the lecture theatre to work on these activities, they used software like Google docs to upload their work and to feed back to the rest of the class. I also used other technologies such as Padlet for sharing images of diagrams and models which they had created. For multiple choice questions I used different voting software such as Socrative, or TurningPoint. I used this mainly to test for comprehension and understanding of a concept before getting the students to then apply it in the group activities. I also used the Answer Garden software, which creates a wordcloud of students’ views or answers and is great at starting a larger discussion. International students often lack confidence in talking in a large lecture for multiple reasons but by using these pieces of software it allows them to contribute, sometimes anonymously, without losing face.
I had to do a lot of work in the first lecture, to get the students to understand why we were doing it like this. Mine was the only module using this type of teaching, so I had to explain why it was important for them to watch the videos before they came to the lectures, they wouldn’t be able to do the activities in the class if they hadn’t done their preparation and why this way of teaching was beneficial for them and their learning. It is really important that the first time we introduce students to something new, we explain why we are doing it and how it works for them. It is vital that the students buy-in to the process for it to work.
Example session plan
In a very early session, we would look at how and why organisations need to analyse the external environment and the impact it has on the organisation’s marketing. We did this by showing students how to do a PEST analysis (political, economic, socio-cultural, and technological environments). I created a PEST template in a Google Doc, based on a particular organization or product. I split the room into four areas and asked students to form groups of 2-3 students, and then I assigned each group to one of the PEST components. Then they undertook their own analysis of the environment assigned and filled in the respective part of the Google Doc. After a set period of time I rotated the groups to complete a second environment. Completing two of the four environments was sufficient for them to develop an understanding of how to undertake a PEST analysis. Then I went through the Google Doc on the large screen and gave feedback on the work produced, I prompted the students to consider the evidence they had used and to consider how they knew the things they had added to the document, emphasizing the importance of supporting their analysis with relevant evidence. I tried to model the style of analysis I expected to see in the assignments.
Another piece of software that I like to use is Padlet. There’s a diagram in marketing called the positioning map. So I’ll say, again, work in small groups, and draw a positioning map for this specific product, they can draw it on paper or on their laptops, take a photo of it, upload it to Padlet for everyone to review. Then as a class we can look at them, we can discuss, critique them, and I can give the students feedback on how they could improve it if they were going to put it into an assignment.
Top tips
Limit the technology you use. I realised quite early on not to use too many things in one session. Even if a session was two hours, I would keep it to two pieces of technology, usually one piece of voting software, then either a Google Doc, or a Padlet, then some low tech stuff, like working in groups and writing answers on the whiteboard at the front of the room. Too many pieces of software in a session gets confusing. I also try to keep to a reasonably smallish set of technologies across the whole module, this way the students get familiar with using each one.
Trial and error. I did lots of different experimentation with different technologies for different activities, and some simply didn’t work. You need to have backup plans with low-tech options for most activities, just in case the high tech doesn’t work, you need to plan for no wifi in the lecture theatre. .
Outcomes
For my cohorts I did see positive improvements in the students’ performance in the assessments, particularly at the lower performing end of the cohort. There were less fail and marginal pass grades and most students performed better than a pass classification. However, at the higher end, it didn’t really make much difference with only a small increase in the number of top classifications. Generally the student feedback was very positive, particularly from the international students who liked having the recorded content in advance and in a form they could use at their own pace. They did say it was more work than other modules, but found it easier than other modules because the delivery and exercises were structured.
Postscript
As I have moved my teaching to a bi-modal delivery method during the Covid-19 pandemic, I have been able to use the techniques and skills I developed through my experience of flipped learning. Even though most of my live sessions have taken place virtually, I have still been able to use polls, online documents, and whiteboards to create an interactive learning experience for my students.
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