Abstract:

The flipped symposium is the organisation by Masters Students of a symposium concerning a chapter of the course that is not handled by the teacher. In this activity, inspired by the flipped classroom [1, 3], the students are encouraged to build the course themselves. The specificity of the exercise is the performance of the students who take on the role of a confirmed researcher by reproducing the whole of the scientific dissemination process: collaborative writing of an article, editorial management, reviewing and the organisation of the symposium itself. This activity lets them get a first experience close to part of the work of the researcher, a career envisaged by at least a third of the students, in the perspective of legitimate peripheral participation [2].

For the writing of the course, the students are separated into author groups and choose a subject which is validated by the teacher in terms of pertinence to the course. The student productions are then integrated into the course material and become part of the course evaluation.
Whereas in an ordinary course, the teacher would define the writing modalities, handle the reviewing process and run the symposium, in this case, the students actively participate in this tasks through the editorial and organisational committees. It is therefore a committee of students who define the editorial line: general structure of the article, author guidelines and reviewing criteria. Each student then has an individual reviewing role by evaluating a contribution following the instructions of the editorial committee. The organisational committee is in charge of organising the contributions into a program and proceedings, handling the sharing of the presenting and question times, introducing the speakers and ensuring the smooth running on the day of the symposium.

This pedagogical approach gives students three roles; co-author, reviewer and co-organiser. It puts them into a real-life situation where they can develop fundamental skills in the subject area whilst developing transversal skills that are indispensable to their future career. The acceptation of responsibility by the students is central to this approach. In this exercise, the teacher initially defines the outline of the course chapter to be dealt with and the calendar for the activity before adopting the role of facilitator by providing the students with several tools: bibliographical resources, management tools, room booking.

The entire activity was managed using tools on the establishment’s MOODLE platform including the plug-ins Group Choice, Wiki, Workshop and Questionnaire.

This student centred experiment can be considered a success with a vast majority of students appreciating the activity and the responsibilities that they were given. The pedagogical approach and the organisation of the activity were subject to a thorough evaluation by the learners. The details of the methodology, its implementation and the results of the evaluation will be presented in detail at the conference.

References:
[1] De Stercke, J. (2015). Une classe renversée à l’École du Feu: récit d’une expérience pédagogique en formation professionnelle. Formation et profession, 23(2), 83-86.
[2] Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge university press.
[3] Strayer, J. F. (2012). How learning in an inverted classroom influences cooperation, innovation and task orientation. Learning Environments Research, 15(2), 171-193.

Keywords:

Flipped learning, high education, MOODLE.