Flipping the classroom: A sneak peek behind the camera

Dr. Claudia Krebs is using technology to flip her Brain and Behaviour Lab. Here’s how MedIT is helping make it happen.
Behind the camera

Waiting for the director to call “action!”

After seeing a presentation on a flipped classroom approach taken by the Sauder School of Business, Dr. Claudia Krebs, Senior Instructor in the Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences, was inspired to use technology to change the way her students interact with course material. She engaged the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT) and the MedIT Educational Technology team to help her “flip” her classroom as part of UBC’s Flexible Learning Initiative.

In this flipped classroom model, students have access to recordings of lectures, demonstrations and interactive modules in advance of the scheduled class time. The class time normally dedicated to introductory concepts can then be used for the application of learning through hands-on lab work and enriched problem solving activities.

“Academia is really about exchange, problem solving, and thinking,” says Dr. Krebs, “Students can now come to the classroom with prepared questions, which can be answered at a different level.”

Drawing on expertise available in the Faculty of Medicine

Two contemporary dancers move across the floor of a bright atrium. They pause in a lift and Dr. Krebs explains in a voiceover how two structures of the brain function to control the movement of the dancers. This conceptualization of anatomy through everyday examples is one way the Educational Technology team was able take Dr. Kreb’s idea “to a whole new level.”

Dancers and team - cropped

Claudia Krebs, Justin Student and Zac Rothman have a
discussion as the dancers practice

Justin Student, Instructional Designer, and Zac Rothman, Digital and Video Media Producer, applied their creative consideration to determine how the dancers and other instructional concepts best suited different digital media. The team spent five days with Dr. Krebs filming footage for nine videos with a RED 4K digital camera – which boasts four times the resolution of an HD camera. These videos serve to provide the “big picture” to students, while allowing them to move through and revisit the content at their own pace.

The videos will each have two main sections: a demonstration of the brain, and a “chalk talk” – a lecture given as the material is drawn on a chalk board. The chalk talks were inspired by UBC’s collection of anatomical drawings by Nan Cheney, the first medical artist at UBC’s Department of Anatomy.

What the camera doesn’t capture

Flipping the classroom isn’t just about creating engaging video content. The Brain and Behaviour Neuroanatomy Labs have undergone an entire course redesign. Sixteen new interactive modules were created to support further exploration of key concepts, lab manuals include more practice activities, and readiness assessments were developed for the beginning of each lab using Audience Response System technology. This learner-centred approach enables real-time feedback to questions so that teaching assistants can assess knowledge gaps before the class begins and adjust their approach to address them.

Flipping the classroom for Brain and Behaviour Lab was important to Dr. Krebs because of the well documented phenomenon of “neurophobia” in medical students. Brain-related courses often leave students feeling overwhelmed because, while interesting, the brain is simply difficult to understand. Dr. Krebs hopes flipping her class will help students realise that “the brain is fascinating and you can understand it.”

If you’re interested in taking a new approach in your classroom, contact the MedIT Service Desk to arrange an Educational Technology Consultation.