An Empirical Study on a Flipped Classroom in Open University Teaching Based on an Ecological Perspective: A Case Study on a Translation Theory and Practice Course

A flipped classroom refers toa model of learning which reverses how time is spent in and out of the class to shift the ownership of learning from the teachers to learners. But from the perspective of ecology, education can be healthily developed in a harmonious and dynamically-balanced ecological system. Therefore, this project, exemplified through translation teaching, constructed a flipped teaching model based on an ecological perspective that open university distance learners will adapt to after revisiting the flipped classroom. Through the teaching experiment in the course on Translation Theory and Practice, the author highlighted that a good ecological relationship should be established in the translation subject, the translation object, the objectives of the translation course, and translation sources and requirements from the translation market — based on which the basic teaching process of a flipped classroom was developed. Using a questionnaire and interviews, the results of a one-year experiment showed that the flipped teaching model with the integration of modern information technology (functions of interaction, virtual simulation and social networking) in translation teaching could foster greater student engagement and higher levels of motivation and translation competence; and the teachers were excited by the opportunity to enhance their teaching practice and the profession. However, some major challenges were also posed to the students and teachers, viz.: (1) how to make the students transform from knowledge-receivers to knowledge-producers; and (2) how to improve the teacher's TPACK(technology integrated into some curricula) — for example,how to explaina concept in a bite-sized video (the pace, the visual representation, and the aligned assessment practices) and how to extend these activities into the classroom.