Abstract
We describe a case study of a third-year undergraduate class in Enterprise Education. A blended learning design in the form of a flipped classroom with a duration of one semester, was explored in two cohorts. The question was to explore how students experienced the flipped class for learning and how this approach presented the different presences in the Community of Inquiry (CoI), and its revisions. The online learning components represented the individual learning space, where the main resource was bespoke videos that replaced lectures and complemented the textbook and other learning material. The classroom hosted a business school-style seminar where students in small groups engaged in solving a new business case study, going through phases of developing a concept to presenting the group solutions to the class. It aimed at fostering active learning both inside and outside the class. Students participated in the activities to apply the theory in new cases. The teacher facilitated the sessions, provided direction and correction as needed. The research used mixed methods consisting of trace data, quantitative and qualitative student feedback to explore how suitable the flipped classroom in undergraduate education was towards developing deep learning. The online individual learning space yielded highly salient Teaching Presences, accompanied by evidence of Agency Presence, characterised by independent activity and personal learning preferences. Online videos and ICT resources helped with understanding the theory ahead of class meetings. Seminars in the collaborative space fostered deep learning of the theory, and enabled students to apply the prepared theory in case studies and solve problems. Integration and particularly Resolution in Cognitive Presence of CoI featured in the seminars, while Social Presence was the weakest. Suggestions are made to implement the flipped class principles in an online class.
Highlights
While traditional lecturing still constitutes the primary teaching activity in South African higher education (Ng’ambi, Brown, Bozalek, Gachago, & Wood, 2016), it is seriously being reconsidered as an effective learning space (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004) because active classes have been shown to produce better learning outcomes (Freeman et al, 2014)
Findings and discussion Findings on educational technology We first discuss the importance of the online videos and slides within the bigger picture of online resources in the course management systems (CMS), as gathered from Blackboard Learn TM (Bb)
The detailed CMS tracing data over time indicated that slide hits were consecutive with the video hits and all students accessed each of the nine slide shows in the week after becoming available
Summary
While traditional lecturing still constitutes the primary teaching activity in South African higher education (Ng’ambi, Brown, Bozalek, Gachago, & Wood, 2016), it is seriously being reconsidered as an effective learning space (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004) because active classes have been shown to produce better learning outcomes (Freeman et al, 2014). Those active pedagogies (among others) include group problem-solving, tutorials, peer le Roux and Nagel International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (2018) 15:16 instruction, and studio or workshops in class time (Freeman et al, 2014; Milman, 2012). Teachers should strive to discover the optimal configuration of their classes in order to maximise benefits from the blend
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