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In today’s fast-paced globalised higher-education classrooms, innovative pedagogical approaches that utilise technology or hands-on activities are becoming increasingly relevant and knowledge-enhancing. Teaching approaches such as flipped classrooms, although not relatively innovative, are one of the more integrative approaches that allow student autonomy and increased discussion and communication among those in the classroom.
Pioneered in 2007, Johnathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams first utilised a flipped classroom in its basic form using pre-recorded PowerPoint lectures that allowed their absent students to catch up on missed classes (Bergmann & Sams, 2012). As a principle, flipped classrooms places the learning first with the students taking a very active role while the lecturer serves as a facilitator or a guide to the learning process. Although it projects the lecturers’ role as secondary, this is quite the opposite, in a flipped classroom, continued observation is required and lecturers should review and adjust their teaching style to ensure the students are on the right path and have understood the taught materials as they were intended to be understood.
In higher education, students are expected to engage in their course materials naturally and autonomously with minimal instruction from the lecturers (Al-Samarraie, et al, 2019), thus this is where a flipped class would theoretically excel when implemented in universities.
However, it should be noted that when dealing with a large class, the lecturers are also often confronted with having to address the differing skill levels, learning needs and expectations of the students (Newman et al., 2017). Thus, in the process of implementing a flipped class, a lecturer must adopt a flexible attitude and use a “differentiated instruction approach” (Govindaraj & Silverajah, 2017) to attune to students’ needs and expectations in the classroom. This is used in the rotation teaching method where large classes are divided into smaller sub-groups and assigned different tasks to be rotated on a predetermined set timeframe (Nurkamto et al., 2019). This allows for the students to collaborate and learn independently while also receiving guidance and support from the lecturer in rotation (Govindaraj & Silverajah, 2017); Nurkamto et al., 2019). The melding of the rotation approach into the flipped classroom in this instance is a supplemental teaching methodology aimed to boost the interaction and collaboration between the students during the face-to-face session of the flipped classes. These classes would also be used to check in with their lecturers for immediate feedback on their study and learning progress (Lag et al., 2019).
As we move forward into the 4.0 industry, the integration of digital technology in higher education is seen as an innovative attempt to engage and encourage the students toward student-centred learning (Ishak et al., 2020). Therefore, pre-recorded lectures feature heavily in most instructional materials for the students to study outside and before the scheduled flipped classes (Van Alten et al., 2019). Due to the easy access to online resources, there are several videos already available and uploaded by other experts such as Khan Academy as well as a variety of other similar videos uploaded on YouTube, TEDx talks, and SlideShare among others. Using this option, the students would watch the videos prior to classes in their own time and at their own pace.
This study was intended to investigate the perceptions of undergraduates and their overall experience of flipped classrooms. Thus the research questions were as follows:
- 1.
What are the students’ perceptions of flipped classrooms in comparison to the traditional teaching approach?
- 2.
In what way did the flipped classes affect their learning experience?
- 3.
How did the students utilise technology in their flipped classes?