Abstract:

Traditional teaching in higher education implies the image of an active teacher, and a student as a passive listener. Such arrangement of the main stakeholders of the educational process implies the application of outdated teaching methods, and, as a consequence, reduced motivation for learning, defocusing and concentration problems during lessons appear. The objectives of modern teaching are clear and obvious: creating a healthy and inspiring learning environment, encouraging independent learning skills, producing students ready for vertical thinking, motivating teaching staff who will convey the contents in a way adapted to the principles of modern teaching. Modern teaching implies the application of modern interactive methods and techniques of work, with the direct involvement of students not as passive listeners and recipients of ready-made information, but as creators of the teaching process. To achieve that, it is also necessary to use the modern technological means that have become part of online teaching. The use of new technologies is particularly significant when the "flipped classroom" method is applied, in which students have access to the audio-visual content that is used in the performance of the tasks given by the teacher. In fact, the teacher prepares, or directs the student to virtual sources of knowledge, which represent a kind of a learning resource. Namely, the "flipped classroom" itself is the opposite of traditional teaching. Students are given tasks to research the topic that will be the focus of the following lectures. In the meantime, the teacher prepares appropriate challenges, a kind of homework that students prepare before the realization of the lesson during which the professor is to familiarize them with the appropriate teaching content. Such approach puts students in a proactive position to be direct participants in the process of designing the lesson and to be able to lead it.
We have conducted a thorough research within the teaching process in which we included students studying philological sciences, in order to perceive the functionality of the "flipped classroom" method in higher education. The research included students and professors from the following Departments: Macedonian Language and Literature, English Language and Literature, Italian Language and Literature and German Language and Literature. In the first part of the research, we conducted an electronic survey among students to get information about whether they have any knowledge about the "flipped classroom" method and whether they were part of the teaching in which it was applied. The second part of the research consisted of workshops in which the team of teachers properly introduced the students to the "flipped classroom" method, which actually represented a preparation for the third phase of the research in which they had to apply this method to the teaching unit Phraseologisms in the language that they study. The goal of our research is to guide students to think in the direction of using the modern teaching methods current worldwide. The obtained results, as well as the research strategies, will be attached in schematic representations and tables.

Keywords:

Flipped classroom, students, contemporary teaching, higher education.