Abstract:

In the last years, higher education has been pressured to shift from teacher-centered teaching towards more flexible, effective and active student-centered teaching that reduce the negative effects of traditional models of education with the support of digital information-communication technologies (ICT). For some time now, there has been advocated modern learning and teaching strategies based on student centric approach with their active engagement. Most relevant student centric learning and teaching strategies are: problem base learning, work base learning, project base learning, inquiring base learning, flipped classroom, laboratory base learning, game base learning, instruction/lecture base learning, peer/collaborative learning.

There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted higher education but it also gave teachers an opportunity that, during that period, try out those innovative pedagogy strategies. One such innovative and interesting modern learning and teaching strategy, which brings numerous advantages, is flipped classroom (FC).

The flipped classroom model is based on the idea that traditional teaching is inverted in the sense that what is normally done in class is flipped or switched with that what is normally done by the students out of class. Thus, instead of students listening to a lecture in class and then going home to work on a set of assigned problems, they read course literature and assimilate lecture material through video at home and engage in teacher-guided problem-solving, analysis and discussions in class. In that way students become active before and in classroom with the support of digital ICT. The teacher obligation, on the other hand, is designing a learning design before applying that strategy.

This paper discusses the nature of applying the flipped classroom approach in a higher education digital environment – learning management system (LMS) during COVID 19 pandemic. To be more precise, focus of paper is based on two research questions: What is the student’s perceptions of learning through flipped classroom? and How flipped classroom affects student achievements?

To answer those question, paper provides a literature review examining and highlighting the most important aspects of applying flipped classroom in education such as opportunities, challenges, constraints and best practice. In addition to the literature review of the applying flipped classroom, paper presents a case study where flipped classroom approach is applied in a course IT Service Management which is preforming on the last year of vocational study program in University of Zagreb, Faculty of organization and informatics. Besides perception, student achievements (final mark and assignments during semester) was analyzed with the given answers. Some correlation was identified, and interesting conclusions were drawn based on the given results. Paper also presents discussion based on the results of case study.

The contribution of the paper is dual. On the one side provides an academic background analyzing various flipped classroom applications in University environment and from the other side is pragmatic, presenting approach, experience and findings in using flipped classroom in one course of the last year of vocational study program in University of Zagreb, Faculty of organization and informatics.

Keywords:

Modern strategies of learning and teaching, flipped classroom, student achievements using flipped classroom, student engagement, flipped classroom case study.