Learning in Higher Education in the 21st Century

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Learning in Higher Education in the 21st Century

Embrace paradox for Flipped Learning in an Interdisciplinary Class


2015 Autumn Wisdom of Teaching Final Report
Topics: Teaching philosophy as well as what an ideal teacher/professor should be like, Course design; Tips on effective teaching
Yu-Hsuan Lin, ELP (Economics), Catholic University of Korea
Outlines :
I.        Challenges of Higher Education in the 21st Century
II.       Flipped Classroom
         i.       Course Design
       ii.        Practise and Challenges in an Interdisciplinary Course
III.     Tips for Flipped Learning

I.        Challenges of the Higher Education in the 21st Century

“After God had carried us safe to New England, and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God’s worship and settled Civil Government, one of the next things we longed for and looked for was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity.” by The founders of Harvard recorded their reasons for establishing this center of learning in 1643.
‘The world is going to University!’ is an article title of the Economists in 2015[1]. The global share of the student-age population at university has gone up from 14% to 32% from 1992 to 2012. University enrolment is growing faster even than demand for any other consumer goods. Korea is in a leading position of this movement. The proportion of Korean high-school graduates going on to higher education rose from 40% in the early 1990s to almost 84% in 2008[2]. As passing the civil-service exam and gaining entry to the privileged yangban class in the Choson dynasty in 14th century, these days passing the insanely competitive university entrance exam (the suneng) is a fundamental requirement for a decent job and an entry ticket to the upper class.

With such motivation, according to the statistics provided by the Ministry of Education in Korea[3], the number of school for undergraduate courses had increased from 109 in 1980 to the 222 in 2010, peaked in 2005 (224). In 1980, there were 448,515 students doing undergraduate courses. In 2010, this student number had reached 2,555,016, which is 5 times larger than that in 30 decades ago. As other developed countries, participation in Korean higher education has continued to increase towards universal. A web publication, Our World In Data[4], projected the share of the population aged 15+ educated to degree level in Korea. There has been a gradual growth in the shares from 16.6% in 1995 to 30.5% in 2015.

The rapid evolution in higher education influences not only the human capital from a macro perspective, but also the course instruction from a micro perspective. Instead of discussing the higher education reform, this article discusses the learning strategy of the higher education in Korea.
Before talking about a solution, it is worth noting that two challenges of learning in higher education in the 21st century: personalised learning and distance learning.

1.     Personalised learning

Compared to two decades ago, the number of students taking a double-major programme has dramatically increased. In order to survive in the severe competition in the job market, students are desperately seeking to build a career path with global competitiveness and multiple skills.

Having mentioned students’ motivation, the academic community has taken more attention on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary programs when the traditional disciplines are unable or unwilling to address an important problem. Practice of interdisciplinary research and teaching are getting popular. Since 1998, a growth in the number of bachelor's degrees awarded at U.S. universities classified as multi- or interdisciplinary studies.

Therefore, the 21st century education shall provide a personalised learning programme. Universities used to be the places where students could develop their specialities; nowadays they have turned to encourage their students expanding their interests. The course instructors shall design a student-oriented learning strategy for their diverse needs.

2.      Distance learning

The expansion of the Internet and technology development have changed students’ learning dramatically. The technology could help them easily reach to massive and diverse-sourced information. For example, anyone who is interested in learning could access to a course on MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) or Coursera[5]. Access to those courses has allowed students to obtain a level of education provided by excellent lecturers in elite universities that many only could dream of in the past. Not mention that those courses are almost free in terms of money and time, as long as you can reach to the Internet. This has changed the face of education.

Whilst students are offered an alternative chance of learning, course instructors shall think about a new learning strategy. Joshua Kim’s article “Why Every University Does Not Need a MOOC” noted that offering free material may not make sense for the individual university[6]. It is more important to stand out in other ways.

II.      Flipped Classroom

Since I become a course instructor, I always ask myself a question: what shall I teach? If students could access to on-line education provide top speakers, there is no need to listen to my boring lectures. Without any cost, students could stay at their convenient home and get an excellent lecture any time they want. How can I compete with a big name professor with rich teaching and research experience?
Therefore, I re-examine my teaching motivation and reset my teaching strategy. Flipped learning is a solution I’ve found. It is an instructional teaching strategy by reversing the pre-class previews and the traditional in-class lectures. In other words, the pre-class learning becomes instructional content. On the other hand, flipped learning moves activities, including those that may have traditionally been considered homework, into the classroom. In a flipped classroom, students watch online lectures, collaborate in online discussions, or carry out research at home and engage in concepts with the guidance of the instructor in the class.

Having discussed the challenges of the higher education, the flipped learning could provide solutions to cope with the challenges. Firstly, the flipped learning requires the instructor getting closer to students. The instructors act as tutors in the class. They not only do one-way knowledge delivery, but also provide student-oriented training for students’ needs. Secondly, the flipped learning could use the best of on-line courses. The instructors shall not compete with those excellent lecturers in elite universities, but using them as the best teaching assistants. Depending on their levels, students could approach to most adequate on-line resources. In other words, the flipped learning could turn the challenges into strongest advantages.

Following, I will provide my flipped education experience in an interdisciplinary course. In 2014 autumn semester, I instructed a course about environmental economics. Before doing it, I was confident because I just completed my PhD degree in this field. I adopted traditional lecture method. Nevertheless, four month later, I and my students felt depressed. A teaching strategy reform was necessary. In 2015, I decided to adopt the flipped learning due to the diverse needs of students. They were from different majors and even nationalities (30% of them are oversea /exchange programme), their motivations of taking this course were very different from each other. It’s difficult to provide a regular lecture for students with different levels and needs. The flipped learning allows students adjusting their self learning strategies according to the situation each individual faced at home. Following is the course design.

         i.        Course Design

There were three stages for each topic: pre-class self-learning, in-class group discussion, and post-class learning.

In the pre-class self-learning stage, students were expected to spend most of their effort. An article or several on-line videos were provided for their individual learning at home. The article length was 4-10 pages. Regarding on-line videos, each video was up to 5 minutes and the total watching time was about 30 minutes[7]. After reading or watching the given materials, based on what they learnt, they did an on-line quiz by answering 10 multiple questions from the materials. The expected studying time is 3 hours. There was one optional question, they could ask question or request more explanation about the materials.

Turning now to the in-class stage, they were assigned to a group of four and shared their experience about their individual homework in the first 15 minutes. After that, the instructor showed their on-line answers. If they did not have a common answer, the question would be discussed and illustrated by the instructor.

Following that, they were given a list of problem sets for the group work. They were given 20-30 minutes for the group discussion and got invited to solve the problems on the stage. The instructor would only wade in when they did not know how to do it. The main purposes of this stage were self-evaluating understanding and learnt from each other.

In the post-class stage, they were not given any homework. However, they could and been encouraged to do further investigation for their interests.

       ii.        Practise and Challenges in an Interdisciplinary Course

My first flipped classroom experience mixed both success and failures. Some of students were motivated and found the course interesting. From the mid-semester student satisfaction survey (MS3S) conducted in week 7, students felt great enthusiasm from the instructor. They claimed that their English levels have improved by watching the pre-class materials and participating in the in-class discussion. Some of them studied harder due to the pre-class activities which offered them more flexibility to preview and study in advance. A questionnaire conducted in week 13 has suggested several positive words students thought of this course: positive, interesting, cooperative, satisfied, and enjoyment.

However, a number of serious drawbacks were raised. Some students felt uneasy with the flipped learning because it was different from the traditional learning strategy. There were couple request to have additional summary about the pre-class and in-class activities. The MS3S suggested that they found the materials covered in class unhelpful. Particularly, some of them were unfamiliar with mathematics. They even felt frustrated by solving basic algebra. Several negative words from the questionnaire include: anxiety, shame, isolated, bored, frustration.

These negative feelings mainly were due to inefficient and unhelpful in-class discussion. Several students commented that there was no discussion and they felt isolated and bored. To resolve this this challenge, Parker Palmer’s book, The Courage to Teach, might be helpful. He raised several paradoxes in teaching and learning. Paradoxes include, ‘the space should invite the voice of the individual and the voice of the group’, ‘the space should support solitude and surround it with the resources of community’ and ‘the space should welcome both silence and speech’, are relevant to this challenge. The instructor should embrace these paradoxes and design a clear and coordinative task for the group discussion. These would include the group formation (self-grouping might be helpful), feasible questions, rewards for tasks, and so forth.

Flipped learning is not a panacea to resolve for all difficulties in learning. Having said that, it offers an alternative way by changing the pedagogical design for autonomic studying before the class, and sharing knowledge with others. In the age of overwhelming information, the roles of learning and teaching become a paradox. In other words, the role of instructors is only providing the class rules and guidelines. Everyone in the class could be both a teacher and a student.

III. Tips for Flipped Learning

A.     The pre-class activities should be clear and relevant to the materials. Activities such as on-line quiz shall ask explicit questions that students could find the topic thoroughly. Any ambiguous or implicit question would make them lost.

B.      The pre-class materials shall be prepared comprehensively for varying levels. Especially, an interdisciplinary course would have students from different majors. Some fundamental skills, such as mathematics, might be their weakness. This challenge requires extra practise and assistances from the instructor. Fortunately, the on-line courses, such as Khan Academy on Youtube[8], would be the best teaching assistances.

C.      A summary of the pre-class materials is helpful to some students, before proceeding to the in-class activities. Particularly, it is suggested by some students who were more familiar to the traditional lecturing way. They need more explicit guideline, when they were overwhelmed by massive information. Apart from that, a summary was also welcomed in the end of each topic.

D.     The in-class discussion requires good team coordination. Considering some of them might be used to the spoon-feeding education, how to encourage the effective discussion would be very important for their learning.

Though teaching materials and learning strategies are varying with technology development and learning environment, the teacher would face different situation and challenges in the 21st century. The intrinsic motivation of teachers has been unchanged, and will be. Finally, this article would like to end with a quote from Nikos Kazantzakis about teachers.
“True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their own.” ― Nikos Kazantzakis


Reference:
Palmer, P. J. (2007). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher's life.