By Robert Talbert, Grand Valley State University professor
The following article is contributed by Robert Talbert. A professor of mathematics at GVSU, Talbert is on a year-long sabbatical working at Steelcase as a scholar-in-residence.
Nearly 1000 years have passed since the founding of the first university. For most of this time, higher education has looked and operated in many of the same ways. However, changes in technology and globalization have altered the nature of learners and the world in which they operate. How will higher education respond, and what does the future of higher education look like?
These questions were the focus of a session at the recent EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) conference in New Orleans entitled “A Flipped Future? Lightning Talks on Teaching.” I was one of three speakers who spoke on the future of higher education, sharing the stage with MJ Bishop, Director of the Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation at the University System of Maryland; and Kyle Bowen, Director of Educational Technology at Penn State University.
FLIPPED LEARNING
My talk focused on flipped learning, a pedagogical technique in which lectures are mostly removed from class meetings. Students gain first contact with new material through structured self-teaching. Reclaimed class time is then used for active learning experiences. Through flipped learning, students discover how to learn on their own and gain experience solving difficult problems in a way that promotes collaboration.
Flipped learning in higher education emerged in the early 2000s and has seen rapid growth since the beginning of this decade. In my talk, I proposed four “grand challenges” for flipped learning to continue this upward momentum over the next several years:
- Craft a common definition of flipped learning
- Produce a body of rigorous empirical research that establishes big results about the effectiveness of flipped learning
- Create a global library of open educational resources that support flipped learning in critical subject areas
- Build a global network of local communities of practice