In 2015 Aarhus University in Herning began to offer the education in electronics engineering as an online education and an education that can be studied on campus in Herning. In order to be able to teach both online and campus students it was decided that the overall teaching method should be blended learning based in the flipped classroom.
At an evaluation of the education, the students raised the question: "When do we have time to study?" The students believe that, cited: "The more a student you become (self-reading, the longer we attended the study) the greater a problem flipped classroom becomes" (see app 10.6).
The students believe that the learning method flipped learning, make them spend their time in a manner the teacher wants. The students do not have time to study on their own and do not believe that the scheduled time provides time to study further/on their own.
The above statement has been the starting point for this master project, which has this problem formulation:
Is there a contradiction between problem-based learning and flipped learning?
This Master project describes the following questions:
• What does it mean to "study"?
• What are the essential criteria for adult education?
• What are the characteristics of problem-based learning?
• What characteristics are in the flipped learning method?
• What are the differences between problem-based learning and flipped learning?
A survey are completed to investigate how much time the students spent on the study and on e.g. jobs, if they are satisfied with the time spent and if they are satisfied with what they achieve in spending the time.
The findings in the project is:
When the students gets a relevant problem to solve it allows them as adults to be rulers. To learn the best adult people must be in control in solving relevant problems. Adult learners takes responsibility for their own learning (Knowles, 2005). A student at a higher education is an adult who seeks new knowledge.
The teaching method flipped learning is possible to use for problem-based teaching (Bergmann, 2014). There is no contradiction between problem-based teaching and flipped learning if the didactic setup of the teaching method flipped learning is prepared so that the students have the freedom that adults should have in order to learn the best possible.
Problem-based teaching does not have to be 100% problem-oriented. There are different degrees of problem orientation (Andersen, 2004). It is important to find the degree of problem orientation that didactically fits the study, semester or subject.