Virtual Learning Flipped An Anglia Learning and Teaching Project Eugene Giddens and John Walsh, ALSS #VLFlipped

Initial Problems 1. Virtual learning and the burden of planning/preparation – what if students could contribute their own VL content? 2. Relatively low NSS score for question 17, ‘specialised equipment, facilities…’, of 81% in 2016 – in the context of an overall satisfaction rating of 94% 3. Little activity or traffic on course-level VLE site 4. Minimal use of VLE sites at module level 5. Poor classroom attendance #VLFlipped

What the project did not need to address 1. ‘Feel-good factor’ – already consistently high in subject 2. Creating more face-to-face events or activities #VLFlipped

Make our virtual learning environments better! Project Aims Empower students to: 1. control an enhanced course-level VLE site 2. create bespoke content for virtual environments 3. produce parallel content on Twitter and Facebook pages for the course – satisfaction, retention, and recruitment Make our virtual learning environments better! #VLFlipped

Project Design 1. Students recruited to conceive, manage, record, and document (through social media and VLE) course events. 2. Students to interview fellow students and lecturers for social media. 3. Students to post other interesting material on course VLE and social media. #VLFlipped

Positive Results 1. Increased social-media footprint: most #VLFlipped tweets earned over 600 impressions, with some exceeding 1000. 2. Course VLEs active for first time. 3. 5 hours of staff and student films short films created – can be used for recruitment and marketing. Some have been released on Twitter. 4. Enhanced culture of making the most of what we do naturally. #VLFlipped

Failures 1. Only 31 new followers on Twitter over the past 6 months – which is surprising. 2. Facebook did not work – as there was very little motivation to use it amongst our current students. 3. Students were surprisingly poor at organising and disseminating information about events, although okay at recording them. 4. Students could not work full hours – they had little ‘extra’ to give. 5. ‘Comradery’ not fully achieved. #VLFlipped

Embedded video of student – too large for web #VLFlipped

Embedded video of lecturer – too large for web #VLFlipped

Problems 1. Undergraduate skill-set 2. Closure of relevant student society – The Literary Society 3. Demise of VLE in favour of LMS 4. The nature of ‘pre-work’ and interference with autonomous flipping 5. The ‘informality’ required as a tone set in a flipped space, and a social media space vs the formality required to get things done #VLFlipped

Conclusions 1. Flipping requires ’live’ students. Therefore digital content is unflippable and must instead be heavily ‘guided’, removing an element of spontaneity. 2. Paucity of ’graduate’ skills in pre-graduates makes digital independence more suited to advanced learners. 3. Blended learning means students pursuing own lives across unpredictable patterns – other work, family, exam stress leads to a lack of synchronicity, a requirement of group flipping. 4. Discrepancy between what students say they want and what they really want. VC’s ‘Minimum provision/RyanAir’ model might be the right fit for our students. #VLFlipped