Flipped Classroom

What is a Flipped Classroom?

The flipped classroom is an instructional approach in which the typical lecture and homework elements of a course are reversed. Instructional content is delivered outside the classroom via video lectures, specified readings and focused coursework. This is done by the participants before the class session. The in-class time is devoted to exercises, projects & discussions - activities that have traditionally been considered "homework".

Key advantages of a Flipped Classroom approach:

  • Participants need to have a higher level of commitment & focus to watch, read & absorb the materials prescribed for out-of-class learning.
  • Participants need to come prepared for the in-classroom sessions as they are expected to already know the basics from the recommended course-work that must be completed before class.
  • Participants can engage in the theory part of the course at their own pace and revise / review it as many times as they need / like.
  • The face-to-face interactions in the classroom are devoted to addressing doubts & queries, to more practical, current events & activities related to the topic (rather than spend most of the classroom time on theory).
  • Concepts get grounded better, there is more confidence and a far more result oriented outcome.

What we hope to achieve with this approach is to make BIC Courses even more practical, grounded to ongoing real life events resulting in more confident & profitable trading & investing. There will be zero dilution of the material. As a matter of fact, it is likely to increase and more topics & things like FAQs will get added to every topic.

Hopefully, many of those who wanted to but could not attend BIC Courses due to distance, location, time constraints, home responsibilities and the like can now take advantage of the Flipped Classroom approach and attend BIC Courses going forward.

One IMPORTANT thing: Participants will need to have a higher level of purpose & commitment to the courses, or more correctly put, to their OWN goals & seriousness in achieving them! I am very happy to note that, that is already present.

Especially over the last 2 years (2014-16), I have noticed a clear increase in demand for result (read: profit) oriented engagement AND the higher levels of commitment that participants are having, I am looking forward to the Flipped Classroom approach being more closely aligned to this greater hunger for results.

I would very much like to have your inputs, suggestions & ideas for the Flipped Classroom approach for BIC Courses. Please feel free to call / come over / email your response. I look forward to the same and wish everyone a very Happy New Year 2017.

Wishing Everyone a Very Mokarimakka 2017 !!!
And looking forward to your responses,

Dr. Musa. MD, CMT.
+91 93419 67573.


So that you have fuller understanding of this transition from classroom only to flipped classroom model, its genesis and more, below is the full post that was sent out to BIC mailing list members in Dec 2016 ...

Hi All,
An Important Announcement:
 
As we all prepare to welcome 2017, I am happy to announce some changes to BIC's Courses starting 2017. But first some background ...

While the India Market Reviews (IMRs) have been online for quite a few years, we had not done any BIC courses online. In 2016, we finally took some small steps towards that. We did the Investing in Equity course fully online and then we did weekends 1 & 5 of the Equity - Next Step Course online. We also did almost all the sessions of the Mentorship Progarmme as live webinars.

The feedback and experience for all the participants and myself on these sessions was a very happy one and way better than we / I had expected. There were many surprises:

  • We actually finished the sessions faster !!! This happened because there was a lot more focus on the topic at hand, hence higher attention levels and therefore quicker absorption of the subject.
  • We would break up the topics into even smaller, easier to understand sessions when we did this online. For eg: a topic that took 1-2 hours in the classroom setting was broken down to even smaller sub-topics of 20-40 min each. I know this resulted in a deeper & more grounded learning.
  • We did MORE. We got to discuss more practical stuff, cover more live examples, clarify more doubts and discuss more real trading & investing opportunities!
  • We discussed live events during market hours at the click of a button rather than have to go through cumbersome planning & coordinating a classroom session at BIC.
  • We could schedule the sessions early mornings, late evenings and even on weekdays - all based on the best convenience of the group.
  • We could record the sessions so anyone who missed or needed to review a topic could do that on request.
  • Most participants were more than happy that they could avoid the horrible Bangalore traffic and save themselves lots of time and stress. Perhaps they were fresher as they did not have to deal with the stress of traveling!
  • Some participants after a few online sessions, said a flat no to classroom sessions !!!

One extremely important ingredient for the online approach to be feasible is good stable high speed broadband. This is a must not only for watching the HD videos but also for the live online webinars with live viewing of ALL participants.

Being able to see others' faces live during a live online session makes a huge difference to engagement and learning. This I believe has finally become feasible in 2016 as the telecom industry has finally been able to offer affordable & reliable 4G speeds.

With the above encouraging & positive experiences, we have decided that we shall adopt the Flipped Classroom approach for all BIC Courses starting 2017.

To know more about Flipped Classroom, visit this Wikipedia page here.