When Avnita Bir flipped the learning process

Flipped learning seems to be the preferred mode of studying amongst the students of Santacruz-based RN Podar School.

It was introduced by their principal Avnita Bir, an award-winning educationist. With a long list of accolades in her kitty, Bir's latest achievement is the prestigious FICCI FLO Outstanding Woman Achiever's Award. Bir says, "It was a very proud moment for me, more so as the award was conferred to me at Jaipur, the city where I had begun my teaching journey. It was like joining the dots for me. This was the first time that FICCI added education as a field."

The flipped learning technique that was introduced as a pilot project in mid-2012, was formally introduced in December 2012. This technique involves teachers recording their lectures beforehand and sharing it with the students, so that the latter can view the lectures at home and come prepared to class. This way, since the students are already aware of the subject to be discussed in class, classroom time is spent discussing, solving queries and problems. The conventional way of teaching involves teachers giving lectures in class and students solving problems at home. "With this technique, the roles have been flipped—students need to study at home and revise and clear their doubts in class," shares Bir.

These videos have been put together by creative IT professionals. Phyzok Learning Solutions LLP presents the curriculum in an engaging manner. Lohit Sahu, founder of Phyzok, says, "The team initially spends a lot of time on research. We observe and try to understand the pattern and style of teaching and experiment around it. Then we create the content such that the subject appeals to students. The raw video is shot in a green screen studio; after the post production, the final version is fantastic."

This technique has been such a success that students have now started creating similar videos for junior classes. This helps the juniors learn better and also allows the seniors to strengthen their concepts. Inspired by this, some students have created the video of a rap song, with the lyrics enumerating the characteristics of electrons and protons.

CBSE Class XII toppers of RN Podar School talk about flipped learning:
"I had flipped learning for Math and it helped me immensely. It was easier to learn, as it was so creatively presented to us. These videos helped me get an insight into the subject and led to a clearer understanding of various concepts."— Sonakshi Gupta, city topper, Commerce stream with 98.2%

"This technique works perfectly—I can pay full attention to the lectures as I listen to them at home. Also, I can go through the lectures any time and as many times as I want. We had flipped learning for Physics, Chemistry and Math and it helped a great deal as we could revise more."—Agnivah Poddar, school topper, Science stream with 97.4%

"I had flipped learning for all subjects but it helped me the most in Economics. Our school emailed us the YouTube links and learning from these videos was very helpful. The colours, animations and music helped me memorise the facts and figures accurately. In fact one of the concepts was taught with the video of Donald Duck!" —Niti Vyas, city topper, Humanities stream with 92.2%