Introducing Digital Media for Flipped Active & Blended Learning

Andrew Middleton & Graham McElearney

This post introduces the FAB strand for our forthcoming Toolkit in a Day MELSIG event in Sheffield. Similar posts on the Podcasting for Pedagogic Purposes and the Social Media for Learning strands will follow.

This toolkit will explore the role of digital media to support student-centred active learning.
It is intended that the toolkit will empower the academic and the student by extending their media space with video – video they find, make and deliver.

We will explore the three constituent parts of FAB and the role of video in its various forms to support these ideas individually and collectively.

The ideas behind flipped learning or flipped classrooms signal how active learning can be seeded by engaging students in pre-class study so that time spent together allows for
deeper clarification and exploration of key concepts or the application of skills. It is about learning how to optimise the time we spend together for co-operative learning. But what is the role of video in this and what are the implications of using video for academic staff? Does video, for example, help academics to engage students effectively with pre-study? Does video mean we can dispense with live lectures and focus on being interactive in the classroom?

Active learning is a loose term that embraces many pedagogies including enquiry and problem-based learning, project-based learning, team-based learning and so forth. It suggests‘learning through making’ and ‘learning through being’. But what is video’s role in this? What video assignments can we set and how do we support them? What role do techniques like digital storytelling have in active pedagogies?

Blended learning describes a learning environment that fluently straddles the physical and
digital domains to achieve the best from each depending on the learning context. What is the potential of blended learning? What good examples are there of digital and social media helping us to disrupt the physical boundaries of the traditional classroom? What is the role of video in the blended learning space? How has social media changed our readiness to adopt learner-generated video assignments?

Finally, if we tie flipped, active, and blended learning together as FAB, how does this change the future role of the academic? Who or what is the FAB academic?