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Flipped classroom turns nursing education upside down

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For Greene County News

CEDARVILLE – The merit and strategies of “flipping a classroom” and its usefulness in higher education courses will be addressed for members of the Dayton Area Nurse Educators and all school of nursing faculty at Cedarville University Aug. 11.

The event will be held in the university’s Health Sciences Center and will be led by Tim Bristol, Ph.D., founder of NurseTim Inc.

While Bristol’s background is in nursing, the seminar will be open to all faculty at Cedarville, as the concepts of “flipping a classroom” are applicable to all fields of study.

The concept of “flipping a classroom” was introduced into higher education more than a decade ago. One of the leaders of the teaching method, Wes Baker, Ph.D., is a distinguished professor of communications at Cedarville University. He helped develop the classroom flip as an alternative teaching model compared to traditional lecture-based education.

“What we’ve found, and what research has shown, is that students retain up to 10-20 minutes of information from a lecture,” said Becka Wagner, Ed.D., assistant professor of nursing at Cedarville University. “Using the classroom flip gives students a more hands-on experience than a lengthy lecture.”

In the classroom flip model, content that is normally covered in lectures is moved outside of class, and work normally done outside of class is brought into the classroom.

The flip not only allows students to adequately practice and apply concepts learned in out-of-class preparation, but frees the professor to spend time in focused, more personal instruction when students have questions while working through the in-class assignments.

“In today’s world, especially in nursing, there’s almost too much information to process,” said Wagner. “The classroom flip helps students develop the analytical and critical thinking skills necessary to sort through the information they’ve learned to better put that knowledge to practical use.”

The school of nursing began installing elements of the classroom flip last year when Wagner and Angie Mickle, D.N.P., interim dean of the school of nursing and assistant professor of nursing, decided to phase in the flip into various nursing classes.

“What we do now is ask students to read traditional lecture-type materials prior to class, which prepares them for the in-class activities,” said Wagner. “We give individual quizzes over the readings to keep students accountable, but then we allow them to take the quiz as a group and change answers in the group quiz. The scores from the individual and group quizzes are averaged to get a final quiz score.”

Students use the majority of class time on activities that challenge their thinking and help them apply the knowledge they have acquired during their out-of-class preparation.

This method, Wagner says, allows students to collaborate together to find answers to questions, thereby applying their book knowledge to come up with solutions.

“Many times, they have to really work hard to convince the other group members to change the answers,” she said. “It’s a great way for the students to build those important analytical skills and come up with solutions.”

NurseTim Inc. provides interactive faculty development workshops as well as training and consulting services for administrators, trainers and other instructional specialists. The company focuses on faculty development, accreditation support, strategic planning, research and event planning.

To register or for more information, faculty should contact Sally Skelly in the school of nursing at [email protected] or 937-766-7664.

Content provided by Cedarville University.