The Future of Education

Since the late eighteenth century the methods of teaching have to a large extent remained unchanged. Different teaching-methods and ideologies have been introduced and tried but none has made a radical change in how we educate students.

Currently the new teaching methodology that is getting the most attention is Flipped Learning. The reason it is now generating so much interest is that it is a very different way of teaching and sharing knowledge. Some educators have embraced the new methodology while others have dismissed it all together. The method has its strength but exploring its validity is of great interest to me.

The methodology has, specifically, generated a great deal of interest within higher education. That interest has led to the question of how effective Flipped Learning is as a way of communicating knowledge within higher education compared to traditional teaching methods.

In this presentation an introduction will be given on the results of a survey conducted at the School of Education at the University of Iceland, where the methodology of Flipped Learning was tested. More specifically the research looked at how effective Flipped Learning is from the perspective of the students. A group of students taking the same course, three years apart, were asked to grade the teaching methods in their course and give comments on their experience of the teaching format. The 2012 class was taught using traditional methods while the 2015 class used Flipped Learning. I will present the results of the survey, comparing the method of Flipped Learning to traditional methods from the perspective of the students.