- Title
- Students’ perceived experiences of a flipped classroom at a traditional South African university in comparison to the traditional classroom
- Creator
- Cilliers, Liezel
- Subject
- Teaching -- trends Flipped classrooms
- Date
- 2019
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Masters
- Type
- MEd
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10353/15881
- Identifier
- vital:40545
- Description
- The purpose of this study was to explore students’ perceived experiences of flipped classrooms at a traditional South African university in comparison to the traditional classroom. Universities across the world are confronted with a variety of problems. One of these challenges include the massification of higher education as more students now have access to universities resulting in larger class sizes and lower through put rates. Universities have traditionally made use of the face-to-face model of lectures and tutorials as a passive mode of course instruction and delivery. However, due to the massification of higher education, it has become very difficult for lecturers to communicate and collaborate with students. One of the ways that lecturers have attempted to overcome the problem of massification is to make use of technology to increase the delivery of course content. When lectures are made available online while the traditional class time is used to build conceptual understanding and cognitive skills among students, the approach is known as ‘flipping’ the classroom. Several studies have shown that this type of active classroom approach can perform better than traditional lectures when learning outcomes are compared. There is also a very limited body of knowledge available regarding students’ perceived experiences of flipped classrooms at traditional South African universities. The theoretical frameworks guiding this study are the Activity Theory and Constructivism, whilst a pragmatic paradigm was employed. The flipped classroom was used in one course of the Management and Commerce Faculty at a traditional university in South Africa. The study was divided into three cycles: The first cycle involved 4 weeks of traditional lectures, the second cycle of 4 weeks introduced blended learning into the course, while the third cycle of 4 weeks changed the content delivery method to a flipped classroom. At the end of each cycle a formal evaluation through focus groups interviews (with 10 students per cycle) and a questionnaire (that was administered to the class) was conducted to inform the next cycle. Throughout the research process, the researcher also kept detailed field notes to as an account of the planning, execution and reflection for each class. The researcher also observed the behavior of the students during the various research cycles to provide a ‘snapshot’ of the classes. The results of the study suggest that students prefer the use of the flipped classroom is it enables them to communicate with their peers and the lecturer, and providing them with opportunities to better understand learning content through discussions and reasoning, rather than the means of receiving information. Barriers that were identified included difficulty with learning strategies and technical assistance when students needed assistance. However, students were positive about both the use of the flipped classroom as opposed to the use of the traditional classroom.
- Format
- 127 leaves
- Format
- Publisher
- University of Fort Hare
- Publisher
- Faculty of Education
- Language
- English
- Rights
- University of Fort Hare
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Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
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View Details | SOURCE1 | Cilliers L PDF Dissertation - 200703730-15 April 2019.pdf | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details |