A Case Study Of Team Learning In The Flipped Classroom Of Nanjing University

Informative age asks for higher team learning skills among undergraduate students.Team learning skills are also inner requirements of nurturing healthy personality and important factors in evaluating the comprehensive quality of undergraduates.With the reform and innovation of teaching and learning models in higher education,team learning has increasingly become an important growing point and difficult point.This paper aims to focus on the status and problems of undergraduate team learning and exerts to reflect on the issue and finds countermeasures.Researches have shown that undergraduates hold positive opinions towards team learning while preferring individual learning in practice.This paper attempts to dig out the root reason behind "high recognition,evasive action" phenomenon.The research is pinpointing the common problems of team learning,for example,"free-rider" and "assembly line" phenomena,based on in-depth interviews and case study.The participants selected were freshmen of School of Electronic Science&Engineering,Nanjing University from a classroom-based course-"College Physics I"taught using the flipped classroom model.The data is collected through both face-to-face and internet form interviews and questionnaires.The research intends to describe objectively the status of the issue,find out the inner world of students and figures out the reasons behind.The in-depth interviews with the senior fellow students and professors extend the depth and width of this research and thus lay solid academic foundation for the solutions to the issue.The results show that:1.There is a phenomenon among students to hold a "high recognition,evasive action" attitude toward team learning."High recognition" explains their needs,longings and value recognition of team learning while "evasive action" illustrates their retreating and negative attitudes towards difficulties and confusions in team learning,specifically,"free-rider" and "assembly line" phenomenon.2."Evasive action" phenomenon is explained from three levels:the level of the team,the level of the team members and the level of the environments.(1)Variables at the level of the team are dynamics and developing.During the forming period,the leadership and norms play important roles of attracting undergraduates to take part in team learning.The phenomenon of free-rider easily happens in this period without team norms.After forming the primitive forms,"assembly line" phenomenon become more serious because of lacking team seminars and reasonable tasks.(2)The deeper reason of the "evasive action" is on the level of team members.Having long been in a competitive context of "exam-oriented education",Chinese undergraduates have fewer experiences of team learning and living.College undergraduates are not interested in inquiry,and thus lack the team responsibilities and care for other students.(3)Variables at the level of the environments are that:Firstly,with the overload of courses and pressure of exams,college students don't have enough time to participant the team learning;Secondly,Chinese college teachers lack experiences in managing team learning;Thirdly,the current educational policies and systems in higher education(evaluation system in particular)are disadvantageous to the development of team learning within undergraduates,as well as the support of ICT tools,measures,surroundings of colleges.Four suggestions are thus given as follows:Firstly,upgrade teachers' knowledge and basic skills of team learning based on the rules of team development sequences.Secondly,establish and perfect "TA" system,and collect successful case studies of team learning for college students.Thirdly,change the unified evaluation system and include the team learning skills,and improve and perfect the service support system and resources construction of pedagogical innovation in higher education.