Teaching Practices

A flipped classroom approach

I first heard about the flipped classroom approach (Mazur, 1997, Bergmann & Sams, 2012) from my PhD supervisor, Prof. Bruce Bassett, when he was teaching a postgraduate course on observational cosmology. I immediately liked the approach and so when I began teaching, it seemed a natural approach that fit my practical courses extremely well. I chose to flip my classes for two main reasons: firstly my students have a range of experience with programming, a core skill in my courses, which means the usual issues of pacing are exacerbated where many students will be lost during lectures and many others will be bored. The current approach allows students to learn at their own pace. The second reason is that I believe computational physics is largely skills based and best learned by doing, not listening to lectures. Thus I reserve all interaction time with students for discussions, interactive quizzes, answering questions and then allowing them to work through the practicals with support from myself and tutors.  This blended approach aligns well with UWC's Flexible Learning and Teaching Provisioning Policy (2021) Section 4.1.

Developing the next generation of teachers

I consider myself part of a teaching team, supported by tutors and a graduate lecturing assistant, Dr Bertie Seyffert. Bertie has expressed a keen interest in a teaching career and has proven to be an excellent lecturer. I have used his position as lecturing assistant to give him more experience and an exposure to my somewhat unconventional teaching style. The advantage of a flipped class approach is that all material is already available and it is easy to have an assistant step in to take a couple of classes, especially when all my students and postdocs are experts in computational physics. By training Bertie and my student tutors in my teaching methodology, I am preparing the next generation of future lecturers.  

References

• E. Mazur. 1997. Peer Instruction: A User's Manual, Pp. 253. Prentice Hall. Publisher's Version

• Bergmann, J., & Sams, A. (2012). Flip your classroom: reach every student in every class every day. Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education.