FLIPPED LEARNING IMPLEMENTATION THROUGH GOOGLE CLASSROOM AT HIGHER EDUCATION

During the last years the strategy called Flipped Classroom has gained importance in Education around the world. It was developed by two North American Institute teachers and basically consists of the realization of a previous work at home by the students, which is later strengthened and deepened during the classroom work. The extension of its use has focused primarily on the secondary education level. Its use in the field of higher education is still low, although it has been gradually incorporated into university classrooms. The new didactic approach is a challenge for teachers, as they have to design methodologies and contents in line with the new strategy. Methodologies and content that should be immersed in the new digital era, of course. One way to face this challenge is the use of the so-called Learning Management Systems (LMS). Among the available LMS, Google Classroom has been configured as one of the most powerful, combining simplicity and a very important quality: it is a free-use system. The University of Zaragoza offers the use of Google Classroom and all the tools of the Google universe such as the G Suite for Education for free, with an individual account for each teacher and student who is registered, with an interesting advantage: the account has, in principle, unlimited storage (in Google Drive). This paper discusses the possibilities of using Google Classroom for the implementation of the Flipped Classroom or Flipped Learning teaching strategy in higher education and shows some examples of application. Contents and activities facing the "Flipped" way showed as very attractive for the students, which considered the Google Classroom are very user-friendly. Students also shown the whole "Flipped" strategy designed with Google Classroom as useful for Educational purposes.