Flipped teaching mini case study: Social Sciences Tech Expo

Catherine Fritz demonstrated the concept of flipped teaching – moving assignments into the classroom and delivering lectures as self-paced and scheduled events.

Lectures can be paused by the student to enable research to take place, and give students struggling with vocabulary the chance to look up a word. The lecture is also a much more powerful revision tool. Class work can be more active and collaborative as a result.

The University provides a number of applications to host flipped lectures – Panopto is probably the most suitable, but Kaltura video or NILE based tools like Xerte  are also possible delivery mechanisms. In this case Catherine described how Powerpoint can be used to create slides supported with audio. Her presentation contained a step-by-step guide in how  to do so.

Powerpoint proved an effective alternative, particularly when access to Panopto is not available. In some respects it is simpler to use than Panopto – amending text on a slide is very easy to do. However, long presentations can result in quite large files which are a problem for some distance learners. Dividing these lectures into sections may well be necessary.  As with all asynchronous delivery, support for questions and discussion needs to be available for students at the same time. This will require monitoring, and often moderation, from the tutor.

Overall, this presentation is an excellent example of innovative teaching making used of simple technology and is well worth consideration as an approach.  Many thanks to Catherine for producing what is effectively a multimedia instruction manual!

Since the Expo, a new version of Panopto for the iPad has been launched which offers offers a much better recording experience for tutors and an attractive and useful viewing platform for students. It is free to download from the App Store. Ensure you connect to northampton.hosted.panopto.com and login using NILE.

Resources

Original pptx file in ZIP folder, with audio (large file: 33MB)

Flipped Teaching presentation 15th May 2013 – Panopto recording

Flipped Teaching presentation 15th May 2013 – slide summary PDF

Panopto 4.4 release announcement

Further ‘flipped class’ information: blog.peerinstruction.net