Students on the BSc Educational Psychology programme are learning in more collaborative, engaging ways, thanks to a flipped classroom model designed to support deeper thinking and real-world skills.

What is flipped delivery?

Flipped learning is a pedagogical approach in which students are introduced to new learning material prior to their class, with class time utilised to aid deeper understanding of this material through active learning strategies such as discussions with peers or problem solving activities in groups, facilitated by a lecturer.

Why we moved to it?

During the Covid-19 Pandemic, all of our teaching went online for a whole University year. As passionate educators, we wanted to ensure that we were offering our students the best learning experience we could during this time. As a team we researched how we could translate our teaching more effectively into the online environment, and we moved to a flipped delivery approach.

Why have we kept this approach post-pandemic?

During this time, we reflected on how much more ‘bang for your buck’ this approach offered our students. Not only were they benefitting from the materials curated and written by lecturers in their pre-class work, but the flipped style approach in class-time offers the opportunity for lecturers to shift into a more facilitative role in guiding and empowering students to take greater control of their own learning and ‘deepen’ their discussions. This provided our students with a higher quality learning experience with more opportunities to develop higher level cognitive skills, such as problem solving, critical thinking, application and evaluation, which are important transferrable skills beyond their degree.

Utilising more active learning strategies also allows more time for the lecturer to hold a facilitative rather than the tradition ‘transmissional’ role, giving more time to engage with students on individual and small group basis, listening and discussing students ideas, which offers more opportunity to get to know students and form more effective relationships.

A high degree of study time at University is devoted to independent study, by offering a flipped delivery approach, this helps us to scaffold some of students’ independent study time, which can assist students in the transition into the higher education learning environment.

What does that mean for studying with us?

On the BSc Educational Psychology programme, you will see less of your typical ‘lecture-style’ approach with the lecturer presenting materials in a lecture theatre to a large group of students. Instead, you will see more classroom-based learning environments with smaller groups in flat teaching rooms, with a focus on more discussion, collaboration and problem solving in class. You would also see a variety of independent learning materials to engage with prior to timetabled sessions, such as videos, papers to read, activities, quizzes, presentations.

Renee, a first year student, shares her experiences of the flipped delivery approach:

Flipped delivery implemented in my educational psychology modules has helped me be prepared before the lecture, actively engage in discussions and teachings during class, and foster impactful reflections after lectures. Before lectures, I look at the interactive slides with texts, graphics, pictures, videos, and activities that introduce the lecture topic. Hence, during the lecture, I can add any additional insights, ask questions, and refer to my notes during discussions. Afterward, I engage and reflect on lecture material through post-sessional quizzes, padlets, or additional article readings. Overall, I enjoy and prefer the pre-sessional, lecture, and post-sessional teaching delivery methods as it has deepened my learning, engagement, and understanding of content material.

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