Did Professor CG Just Flip a Classroom on Me?

Class time is spent discussing and and finding new connections

For me, that would have been Okay had  this been his only “Crime” today. But, he went on to call upon his other colleague, Professor Lars! Prof. Lars is not your ordinary professor. He delivered his lecture from a distance, 200km away, online! These two professors conspired to jolt me out of my comfort zone, to make me unlearn what I already knew, to inspire me to think out of the box! Prof. Lars especially, described MOOCs, Flipped Classrooms and all those things an average educator only googles about. And my dear friend, it gets worse.

I just realised that my main Coach (notice I don’t call him “lecturer” anymore) had just flipped a classroom on me. You know, he recorded videos of himself delievering lectures on Project Management. He uploaded them on a collaborative Online Learning Platform in small bits, one each week for 5 consective weeks. Not only were we required to view each uploaded video, we were also tasked to apply the content of the video to our individual “Change Project”! And yes, you heard me right. Change Project. You can only participate if you have a project you want to work on to change your community.

Meeting new People is part of the deal!

Back to our online facilitator; this guy got me both inspired and anxious. You know, he described what youths in Swedish schools are doing – How they are early adopters, collaborators, creative thinkers and self directed learners. And, I know my students are not any of those things! He also described  the Technology roadmap they are charting — from Mobile Phones to Artificial Intelligence, to Visualisation and eventually Autonomy! These things got me really worried. Worried because my students don’t come close to possessing any of the skills this facilitator describes. Worried because even on the technology front, we don’t even use the mobile phone to support learning. Rather, we ban phones in schools for all sorts of reasons!

But his experiences got me inspired and hopeful too. Inspired because I got a glimpse of what the future holds in supporting learning back home. Hopeful because I understood that even here in Sweden, the situation has not always been like this, but changed. It changed because some people took action. Those people are the change agents. And I want to believe that I am one of the change agents that will deliver this dream.

A dream where learners transition from passive consumers of information to active participants in knowledge creation. Where learners take responsibility for their learning and actively contribute to  the creation of new knowledge!

Want to learn more a about the Flipped Classroom?  Read this –  https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eli7081.pdf

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