Ahmedabad

Gujarat Technological University (GTU) is planning to support faculty members who want to launch in their class-rooms latest concept of flipped class-room. After putting the proposal on GTU website, many colleges have shown interest to start flipped class-room. Many faculty members have also shown interest in this unique concept.

In traditional regular class-rooms, students learn in the class-room and then doing homework after reaching home. In flipped class-rooms, the students will watch video lectures at home and obtain all the necessary information, come to class-room, they will do homework in front of professor. If a student has some problem in understand the lesson, professor can teach them immediately.

Dr. Akshai Aggarwal, Vice Chancellor of GTU said that the methodology of teaching and assessment have not changed during the last 158 years. The rest of the world has moved ahead and made their class-room study more interesting and meaningful. As the quantum of knowledge goes on increasing, we have to adopt the new methodology. The flipped class-room is one more step under the Active Learning and Creating Excitement (ALCE) project, which is going on since last Four years in GTU.

Gujarat Technological University under its initiative, known as “Active Learning”, wants to support the Faculty Members, who may want to experiment with the idea of “Flipped Classroom”. The flipped classroom is a pedagogical model in which the typical lecture and homework elements of a course are reversed. Short video lectures are viewed by students at home before the class session, while in class time is devoted to exercises, projects, or discussions. If a Faculty Member, with the approval of his/ her Head of Department and Principal, wants to conduct the experiment for a particular subject, that he/ she is teaching, GTU will provide support in each and every possible manner.

Flipped Learning is a pedagogical approach in which direct instruction moves from the group learning space to the individual learning space and the resulting group space is transformed into a dynamic, interactive learning environment where the educator guides students as they apply concepts and engage creatively in the subject matter. The Four Pillars of F-L-I-P are: (1) F=Flexible Environment, (2) L=Learning Culture, (3) I=International Content, (4) P=Professional Educator.

Under the Active Learning and Creating Excitement (ALCE) in the laboratories, workshops and classes of GTU, workshops for Faculty Members in various subject areas are organised. Regular lectures on selected subjects are telecast under its ACTIVE LEARNING VIDEO LECTURE COMMUNICATION (ALVCOM) series program. MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSE (MOOC) movement at GTU already started since last 4 years. Massive open online course (MOOC) concept is there, which aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web. In addition to traditional course materials such as filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets, many MOOCs provide interactive user forums to support community interactions between students, professors, and teaching assistants.