Karina Sjögren, Medical Library, Umea University, Sweden, karina.sjogren@umu.se
Keywords: flipped classroom; information literacy; teaching; sports medicine; students, health occupations
Umea University in the northern part of Sweden has given both a Sport Coaching programme and a master program in Sports Medicine for some years. The physiotherapist program is much older and has been held in Umea since the 1970-ies.
After some time without Information Literacy teaching from the Medical Library, the Sport Medicine Master program had to get better educational results. So they asked for IL teaching from the Medical Library in 2014, with case examinations two weeks after the IL class. The result for the students became then very good.
In this master program there are students from both the Coaching program and the Physiotherapist program. The Physiotherapist program have had rather much IL teaching, but so not for the Coaching program.
From 2015 the faculty lecturer and I wanted to try a more flipped classroom pedagogy. We wanted a more flexible teaching and learning. We also wanted a more safe access to the lectures for the students at their student platform, Sakai. I made my lectures as eleven different instructional films through the Screencast-O-matic program, with questions for practice for the students to check their understanding.
The films covered an overall lecture on how to search scientific information in sports medicine, and how the students should get to know what scientific literature is. I also made instructional films about the databases PubMed, Physical Educational Index, Sport Discus, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Google Scholar and the Library catalogue with free text- and keyword searching, and also a film about how to make RSS, and how to show the searching results in the case reports.
After three weeks studying in the course and the films for the students, I had a brief lesson with the student’s questions, case instructions and then 2-3 hour time for the case examinations. The course teacher and I had made four different cases, so four students worked separate with the same case without knowing it in the classroom.
Now, what did the students think about this kind of learning? “Good and informative films. Possible to repeat and go back after some time. A good method. I was in control of my own time. I could watch the films whenever I wanted. I could go back to see what I had missed when I did the practice questions. Sometimes I think it is better to be in a classrom IRL and to hear the others question and to be able to give questions of my own. The examination case was a good preparation for our coming master exam work. Good to have the librarian in the room at the examination.” Both the students and the faculty teacher were satisfied with the student’s result and achievements.
We will continue with this flipped form of teaching in this program. Maybe could this be a model for our future teaching in other programs, with more digital resources for the students before they meet us at the lectures.
References:
Bishop, JL Verleger MA. The flipped classroom: A survey of the research. ASEE National Conference Proceedings, Atlanta, GA. 2013.
McLaughlin, JE Roth MT, Glatt DM, Gharkholonarehe N, Davidson CA, Griffin LM et al. The flipped classroom: a course redesign to foster learning and engagement in a health professions school. Academic Medicine 89.2 (2014): 236-243.
Sharples, M, Adams A, Ferguson R, Gaved M, McAndrew P, Rienties et al. Innovating Pedagogy 2014. Open University Innovation Report, 3. http://www.editlib.org/p/149392/ 2016-01-22