Abstract:

This paper aims to present an experience implementing the Flipped-learning model in the context of an Urban Geography Course within the Geography and Land Planning Degree. The personal appreciation of this teaching practice is positive in many aspects since it ensures a pleasant working atmosphere in the classroom, students interact more with their partners and the professor and enables a more direct and continuous assessment. The flipped learning is a pedagogical model that inverses traditional teaching and learning processes. The teacher provides students with different materials such as readings, web-based information, video-tutorials, short documentaries, etc. and they have to work on them on their own outside the classroom. Thus, the classroom time can be employed to more complex learning activities such as problem-solving, case studies, teamwork, etc. Besides, this methodology promotes a constructivist approach in which the acquisition of new content always is supported by previous knowledge, and for this reason, it must be linked to students' previous knowledge. Therefore, we can achieve better teaching results because in class we can work on content previously worked and construct a more complex knowledge. In consequence, the paper will present the methodology applied, explaining the several paces to launch the activities and the resources and design used, but also we will try to evaluate the benefits of the flipped classroom model conducted. In our experience here presented, education activities outside the classroom were delivered through lectures, videos, and other brief activities such as to give a summary or to answer some questions. Both for the outside-class activities and the in-class activities, there is a Moodle space that contains a wide range of resources: quizzes, collaborative notes, exercises, glossaries, discussions forums, etc. As a final activity, students had to make a research about the residential segregation in Bilbao. The literature highlights, among others, that this approach allows a more comprehensive acquisition of contents and a deeper understanding of the subject matter. Besides, the flipped classroom model allows work high-level skills, due to the opportunity of applying the contents addressed through the personal work to a wide range of learner-centered activities. Besides, through the inversion of the traditional class, the students can construct their own Personal Learning Environment, gaining a higher level of engagement, flexibility, and individualization that let them be aware of their learning process and establish self-regulation strategies. At last, another advantage of this model is that the design of activities and materials available through different platforms at any time and place, overcoming the physical and temporal limitations of the traditional classroom reaching ubiquitous learning.

Keywords:

Flipped learning, active methodology, personal environment learning, ubiquitous learning.