Professor Bon Kimura,Dr.
Department of Food Science and Technology
Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology,Japan
Research interest:Food microbiology
First, forgive me for explaining the obvious. Too much talk by me on my classrooms always has gotten my students and me into some frustration. With flipped class, instead of boring the classroom into a coma with a me-only-talking lecture, students can learn online in their own pace consulting with their knowledge and interested areas. Also, I can make my class debate-based.
Let me explain another reasons. In the graduate course of our university, all the lectures are on the fast track to be taught in English, because the ability to logically express themselves and debating skills in English is important for graduate students in their specialized areas in international communities. However, any Japanese students would be going a little panic when you suddenly change a teaching language from Japanese to English. I do not want to torture my Japanese students with English itself. I am microbiologists after all. And here`s where a brilliant notion popped into my head. Yes, flipped class would sort out these language problems! I make Japanese video lesson, and my class is to be conducted in English. That was my fist idea. Then,some non-Japanese students asked me to make English video, too. Which all make sense and I can`t back out… That is why I made myself challenge to make English video. Anyway, I am not linguistics professor, and I think it is better to take the first step in that direction presenting my lectures imperfectly in English than to sit around being overly analytical.
I may be in low gear, but I prefer to be rolling.