Abstract:

The need to achieve greater effectiveness in the teaching-learning process – looking for better results, both in the skills acquired by students and in the time required to achieve them – have troubled educators and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) throughout history.

One of the central points is to have an attentive and active student during the process. To accomplish this, Problem-based learning (PBL) or Inverted Classroom (Flipping), just to name a few of the latest attempts, are viable tools that could be introduced to good effect.

We will focus here on the concept of “Flipped Learning”, in first place because its adoption, at least in theory, brings a great number of advantages and secondly because it is aligned with the increasingly strong trend towards semi-presential or distance learning, with a greater volume of online content.

The central characteristic introduced by Bergmann, J. and Sams, A. around the year 2008 suggested that in the inverted classroom “the tasks or projects are worked out in the classroom and the theoretical contents are learned outside of school”.

For this to be possible, it is necessary to ensure that the theoretical contents are effectively assimilated by students outside the classroom. This points directly to the need of having self-made, readily-available online material (i.e. generated by the HEI), which is of good quality, is updated, and includes not only plain text (the same-old pdf handout) but videos, animations, images, demonstrations, etc., ensuring accessibility to them by the different actors in the system: teachers, students, tutors and technicians.

This last enumeration reflects precisely the weak point by which the expected levels in terms of results have not yet been reached. This scenario requires the deployment of a series of devices (tools, personnel and dedicated time) necessary to reach the contents with the appropriate quality.

Although the teaching activity always had a good dose of histrionic capacity, which in many cases has been the differentiating factor between professors; nobody becomes an "actor" from one day to the next. Crafting well-made videos of the subject contents, accompanied with attractive designs and animations, requires not only courage for putting oneself on the network, but also a solid and thorough technical collaboration that assists in the task at hand.

To these availabilities in HR (human resources), there should be added equipment and programs, special rooms in terms of sound, video and lighting, to ensure a level that does not detract from the quality of the contents.

As an example of the steps that are still missing, we will mention that it is rare to find “charging bays” (outlets) in classrooms and corridors so that the “bring your own device” (BYOD) initiative can be made a real possibility by allowing the easy charging of electronic devices.

We will take a recent sample of universities in Argentina and their development in ICT to comment on the difference between what has been done and what needs to be done to try to ensure that all these proven methodologies can bear fruit simply by complying with some requirements to achieve it. We will also seek to promote collaborative work and non-overlapping efforts from these lines.

In the case of Argentina, it is a good opportunity to complement important advances achieved with the regulations that allow all universities to include distance education for their degrees and postgraduate degrees.

Keywords:

Innovation, technology, flipped learning, on-line-contents, ICT.