Reinventing medical teaching and learning for the 21st century: blended and flipped strategies

There has been a recent rapid increase in the integration of flipped and blended modes of learning into Australian university classrooms. In the move to realize the benefits of these modes of delivery, universities are spending a great deal of time focusing on course redesign and upskilling teachers to assist in the adoption of these new methods of instruction. Large-scale blended learning projects have been completed at The University of Newcastle, Australia. One such project has been the integration of flipped and blended learning strategies into the redesign of the 1st year medical science course as part of a total undergraduate medical curriculum redesign. This course involves a large number of lecturers from a wide variety of disciplines. This involved not only the redesign of this course but also the introduction of new teaching materials and learning objects. To ensure success, this work required input from three groups: the academics teaching the course, the students taking the course, and the instructional designers who create the learning objects. The University of Newcastle, Australia, was instrumental in introducing problem-based learning (PBL) to medical schools in Australian universities with its initial intake of medical students in 1978 and continues the use of this methodology as its primary teaching approach. As the current project develops, it has become apparent the pioneering work previously undertaken to implement PBL, in fact, had incorporated many of the pedagogical principles and strategies of what is now considered blended learning in the flipped classroom (albeit without the technology components). This paper argues that our teachers and students will more easily adapt to the requirements inherent in blended or flipped learning due to previous familiarity with PBL strategies.