Dr Katie Dray (Section of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences; School of Psychology and Life Sciences. Contactable at katie.dray@canterbury.ac.uk)

The context: At level 6, Sport Coaching students are encouraged to engage with contemporary, sometimes messy and problematic issues that affect sport coaches and the participants they support. To encourage students to critically appreciate the topics within this arena, students are asked to explore the research evidence base for how to address such issues in their professional coaching practice. A students as partners in learning approach was adopted to deliver the module to promote adoption and adherence to the flipped classroom model.

The approach: To underpin the curriculum using research informed teaching, staff research topics are used to develop students’ awareness of the issues that might affect their practice. Students are encouraged to locate and analyse research papers in a given area in advance of the session using the flipped classroom approach to promote classroom discussion and allow students to practice synthesising the research and apply their findings to a real data. These classroom activities serve as formative assessment opportunities that mirror the format of the summative assessment where students individually present their analysis and applications.

The practice: To encourage students to be partners in learning, they are in charge of deciding the ‘operating rules’ for the sessions. They can choose how the selection and allocation of research papers occurs, how the literature is reviewed and how the data set is applied. Students are also provided with the opportunity to determine how the class operates when members have not sufficiently prepared to the agreed level.  The student led approach means students are in charge of how the session plays out in practice and the tutor role is guidance and facilitation.

Reflections on the reality: There are a number of reflections of this model worth considering, summarised by the 3 points below;

It’s not perfect: One of the issues that affects the success of the flipped classroom is student motivation to complete the pre-class work (Abeysekera & Dawson, 2015). The intention of encouraging students to decide on (and be held accountable to) the rules of engagement, has the purpose of promoting this engagement but inevitably, this does not work all the time for all students. To avoid staff trepidation about facing an unprepared class of students, having a pre-planned challenge for students is helpful, even better if this is mapped out already in the student rules. The nature of this work ideally should be student led to promote adherence to the flipped model.

The rules need careful facilitation: Having delivered several iterations of this module, it is my consistent experience that student developed rules for operation are not entirely unproblematic! Students often suggest unprepared students should not take part, or that they should have some other sanction that challenges our responsibilities around inclusive teaching. Over time I have reserved the right to veto and re-shape their suggestions and with explanation students typically agree. However, students have also made some excellent suggestions, informing their working groups in session based on their level of preparation and using padlets to determine who ‘owns’ the research papers they bring to class and to upload their preparation.

Tangible take aways are key: Asking students to co-construct knowledge within sessions can be unsettling and they can lack confidence in the outputs because it’s often an unfamiliar model of learning and teaching. Asking students to develop tangible take away (including digital) session materials helps them to identify their contribution (and yours where they are concerned about this!).