THE INTEGRATION OF ACADEMIC LITERACIES WITHIN A 'FLIPPED CLASSROOM' SCENARIO: A CASE STUDY FROM A SOUTH AFRICAN UNIVERSITY

Within the Southern African context, English is the medium of instruction in many Higher Education Institutions (HEI's) in South Africa. According to Jacobs (2005:475) “many students at tertiary institutions in South Africa are not first language English speakers, denying them ready access to content information which is taught through the medium of English at most tertiary institutions”. For first language speakers, English as a medium of instruction therefore constitutes a barrier to successful learning.

To assist non-mother tongue speakers to study successfully in English, interventions are planned in the first year to assist students towards "epistemological access": to use and apply English for academic dialogue, debate and reflection.
These interventions can broadly be classified into two types of interventions: On the one hand stand-alone academic literacy courses which are credit bearing (for example 6 credits or 60 notional hours); and on the other hand mainstreaming of academic literacies: the integration of academic literacies into the taught curriculum.

Whereas a case is made out for standalone courses to reportedly assist students from dysfunctional schooling environments, this discussion will rather focus on ways and means to integrate academic literacies into the mainstream curriculum via the 'flipped classroom'. Integration of academic literacies into each and every module in the Curriculum will yield more learning hours in total than a stand alone academic literacy course of 6 credits or 60 notional hours. The integrated literacies or curricular approach to academic literacies constitutes an inbuilt multiplier in this instance.

Within the flipped classroom, that "what happens inside the classroom happens outside the classroom": techniques such as Mazur's Just-in-time (diagnostic questions before the start of lectures for students to prepare and to bring along to discuss in class), "canned" mini lectures published on Blackboard Collaborate LMS before lectures and after-lecture consolidation exercises via LMS social network instruments such as WIKIS or Blogs.

Mazur's Just-in-Time technique was refined by the creating a before lecture Language Gymn or a before lecture Maths Gym to improve academic literacies in both reading and writing skills and quantitative literacy. A vignette (short case study drawn from the prescribed textbook) was published before lecture on an LMS; students underline main concepts, paraphrase these concepts and then produce a summary. This summary was then verified in the lecture. By the same margin lecture specific mathematical computations (contextualized in a real-life problem or scenario) were published before the lecture for the students to attempt. The same process was used to teach visual literacy: the ability to read and produce graphs.
Additionally a workbook or Textbook Chapter wrap-around was provided to students to record their answers. The workbook contained incomplete mind maps, incomplete conceptual hierarchies and process map - in cases where set procedure needed to be taught. Care was also taken to transform the Textbook Chapter Outcomes into (assessment) questions and exercises (Bigg's constructive alignment).

Within the flipped classroom scenario students attend lecture for answers, use academic dialogue in think-pair-share exercises in large classes; and peer work for verification: skills much needed to survive the complexities of the 20th century and beyond.