Flipped and blended classroom approaches at AAU: Theory, cases and toolbox

This project documents and illustrates six examples of blended learning (BL) and flipped classroom (FC) pedagogy at Aalborg University. BL involves typically the blending of face-to-face and virtual elements while in FC the learning design changes the classical time spent between teachers and students in and outside of class. For example in FC, lectures or instructional podcasts may be moved online to be viewed before class, while classroom time is dedicated to learning activities that require students to engage with the concepts at a higher level. The teacher’s role ‘flips’ to become more interactive and provide answers to contextual and applied questions, give feedback, and prompt reflections of key ideas. Research evidence shows that such approaches increase levels of problem solving structure and practice but also indicates that students may at first be skeptical of such approaches. This project explored six selected examples to inspire university teachers across the faculties to apply BL and FC approaches to their teaching. Each case is contextualised in the PBL environment at AAU and presents three distinct outputs: Background/theory, a document that explains the setting of the case, the particular challenge and the innovations together with the pedagogical and didactical reasoning for the BL or FC approach used in the example. Next, each case includes a video on practice: a podcast where the ‘case owner’ shares the details on what was done and how the teaching innovation was implemented. Finally, each case presents a ‘how-to’ guide on selected tools, where step-by-step instructions are provided that include images plus text instructions, guide how to utilise and apply specific IT tools. The six cases present different scenarios including: the integration of student produced videos; how to turn existing presentation slides into podcasts, pencasts to model thinking on computability and complexity theory; the use of Google+ for interactive teaching and learning; pencasting to support objected-oriented programming; and flipped classroom teaching through the integration of video podcasts in change management, language and international business communication. We found that each case represents a unique application of technological knowledge that is fused with a teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge. The process of teachers reflecting on the specific needs they want to address in their teaching is key to transforming their practices and innovating their teaching through technological applications.