FLIPPED LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION EXPERIENCES, FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS FOR MODERN ACADEMIC TEACHING

Support of learning is one of a teacher's tasks which can be a challenge in every day teaching practice. The heterogeneity of the student body, competency orientation and a steady use of digital media are current challenges specifically in the area of higher education (Schaper, 2012; Johnson, Adams Becker, Cummins, Estrada, Freeman, & Hall, 2016), which need to be addressed. With the flipped learning approach a suitable instructional design has been established to transform and enhance traditional academic teaching. It has the potential to modernize academic teaching and presents itself as a didactical opportunity not only for lectures but also to further develop conventional seminars (Engel 2017) and includes a shift from teaching to learning (Abeysekera & Dawson, 2015). Also known as flipped classroom (model) or inverted classroom (model), it seems to be one of the most popular teaching innovations of the last decade. Numerous publications are available, which show the range of possible applications. Thus, Flipped learning can be described as an approach that can be flexibly applied to different disciplines and settings. The paper presents another example, but for a flipped seminar in higher education, which was applied in pre-service teacher education at the University of Leipzig. As a pilot it was implemented into a weekly seminar for 109 2nd-year students in the field of special education in the summer term of 2017. 10 of 13 classes were extended by e-learning, following the approach of task orientation (Weidlich & Spannagel 2014). The instructional design will be put into perspective and an insight into the development process will be given. According to the approach of an evidence-based practice and following the approach of design-based research, a preliminary study was conducted. In three terms (winter 2015/16, summer 2016 and winter 2016/17) flipped learning was applied and evaluated to develop a student-focused and practicable conception. The research results (see Engel, Heinz & Sonntag 2017) formed the basis for the flipped seminar's pilot concept. These findings will be presented to show how they formed the flipped seminar. It will also be documented how a flipped format can be implemented in higher education and meet the requirements of modern academic teaching.