Bengaluru: Prof P.C. Narayan of the Indian Institute of Management -Bangalore (IIMB) has won the ‘Teaching Innovator Award’ presented by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development for his idea to make classrooms less teacher and more student centric.
The professor who is a faculty of the finance and accounting department of the IIM-B, has come out with an innovation titled “Transitioning from a teacher-centric to a student-centric classroom and online learning,” which includes over 120 Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) videos designed to help students get in depth knowledge of the courses he handles.
Calling his method a “ flipped classroom” he explains that a teacher should play the role of a guide or facilitator rather than being at the centre of a student’s learning process.
“The teacher in a flipped classroom revisits ill understood concepts and facilitates peer-level interaction among students, taking away the need for them to re-learn what is taught in the class later,” he explained, speaking to the Deccan Chronicle.
Prof. Narayan believes the method will inevitably find its way to school classrooms as well owing to its many benefits.
“With technology enabled learning gaining more relevance this method will act as a supplement to the traditional,” he added, contending that technology and classroom learning should complement each other to reinforce the overall learning experience of a student. “Today’s students are part of the YouTube and WhatsApp generation and tend to turn to the Internet often if their expectations in the classroom are not met,” he noted.
