Navigating Flipped Teaching in Finance Classrooms: Strategies and Opportunities – Prof. Rohith R

1st June 2024

After the pandemic, educational institutions were forced to shift their traditional teaching pedagogy into blended learning. They started developing their online tools, exploiting platforms like YouTube channels, Google Classroom and more to deliver the content to the students. By default, the responsibility of the faculties increased as they had to create content with adequate quality and visual appeal. The dependency on technology increases the screen time of students, simultaneously enhancing their self-learning capacity and posing a bigger challenge to teachers to cater to student expectations. This change also resulted in the inability of the learners to focus on the same content for a long period.

Flipped classroom is one of the prominent ways of instructional strategy to implement blended learning in classrooms. Simply put, it flips the traditional classroom homework mechanism and incorporates online tools and classroom activities into teaching.  The flipped classroom is designed as a process involving four stages. Stage 1: Sharing e-contents (in the form of YouTube videos, podcasts and PDFs) to the students a day before the session.  Stage 2:  A Check-up Activity is done in the class to check whether the students have gone through the study material. This can be done by conducting a quiz or games to check the student’s level of understanding on the particular topic. Stage 3: The Follow Up activity involves conducting a classroom activity and brainstorming among students on that particular topic. Stage 4: conclude the class with an open discussion.

Application of flipped mode of teaching into commerce classrooms is quite challenging and tricky, especially in finance papers. The reason is the majority of the finance papers are practical in nature. But if the faculty brainstorm and design appropriate activities, it will help to implement flipped mode of teaching successfully.

Strategies to Incorporate Flipping into Finance Classrooms

1. Gather detailed knowledge on the subject or topic: Apart from a casual reading of the textbook or reference material, the faculty must try to generate an in-depth knowledge on the content. The mastery in the subject knowledge will help them to brainstorm and create new activities and interesting games on the subject.
2. Generate visually appealing content: Create e-content in a visually appealing manner. The faculties can use AI Tools and other online platforms to generate such e-content. Keep in mind that the e-content must be short (Preferably less than 10 Minutes). Try to avoid detailed explanations, too many examples or too much information. In the case of Finance practical papers, it is quite difficult to incorporate big practical problems into the e-content. So the faculty can wisely identify the areas that need to be converted into e-content and prepare a detailed plan for flipping.

• Avoid Using Similar Checkup Activity: Checkup activity is just a tool to measure the understanding level of the students on the e-content. Normally, faculties use quiz or puzzles as the checkup activity. Try to make the activities as interesting as possible using digital tools and applications to create checkup activity and better not to take more than 10 minutes to conduct the same.
• Design Interesting Follow-up Activities: Create the follow up activity that includes some real life situations. For practical papers, faculties can use the real financial statement for analysis, Stock market operations and the like for the purpose. The follow up activity is the core component of the flipped session. So try to invest maximum effort on the follow-up activity. Faculties can work out extra illustrations, revisions, detailed explanations (if necessary) during this time period. Follow-up activity should be designed in such a way that it should be a practical application of the lesson learnt from the e-content.
• Wrap the Session Interestingly: Wrap the session like the first episode of the web series. Faculty must create a curiosity for the next class among the learners. This is a prerequisite for the flipped sessions to work.

To consider the challenges in Flipped learning, the first thing is the resistance from the part of students as well as the faculty. Understandably, it takes time to change the traditional mode of chalk and talk teaching. But once the benefactors taste the effectiveness of the Flipped method, it will help them enjoy your class. They will trust you and take a happy ride with you in the Flipped classes.

Advantages of Flipping in Finance Classrooms

1. Class will be more interesting and interactive: The sessions will be more interactive because students get the study materials and content beforehand. So they will get enough time to prepare for the activities. They can also clarify their doubts during the class time. The benefit for teachers is that they can reduce the lecturing time and they can focus on the activity part.
2. Students will get a chance to understand real life situations: In the flipped sessions, the follow-up activities are more connected with the real life. Rather than passively learning the lessons in the classroom, the students get to solve the problems that are connected with real life. This is more engaging and will be helpful for their future careers.  
3. Immediate Feedback: Faculties will get feedback from the students immediately while conducting the activities in the class. Faculty can assess the level of attainment through the students’ interaction and engagement in the classroom. The feedback can be used to further improve the following sessions.
4. Preparation for future learning: As said earlier, Flipped classroom is like a tele series. Each episode, it is the faculty’s duty to make the sessions more interesting through mixing fun elements in the activities, using AI tools, apps, relevant case studies, real life scenarios and more.   
5. Flexibility: Flipping allows more flexibility in the class as the faculties can adopt any strategies or tools during the class time.
6. 6)    Enhances Critical Thinking: Flipped learning emphasizes higher order thinking such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Students are challenged to apply real life solutions to problems, fostering critical thinking and problem solving capacities. 

   In an educational scenario where the traditional lecturing method has been upheld as the single most appropriate way of teaching for centuries, the introduction of new pedagogical approaches like the Flipped Classroom gives reassurance to all that change for the better is possible. It is a fact that most of us are reluctant to accept the changes, especially when there occurs a major deviation from the established system. In spite of the hurdles or the backlashes, Flipping turns out to be an effective educational strategy. As the present generation of students insist that subject knowledge in faculty is as important as their pedagogical strategies, flipping is one of the many ways we can cater to this demand. As responsible