Anna Järnerot- Institute for Teacher Education, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
The article presents a design-based study. The intention was to increase student teachers’ utilization of study time, fostering enhanced learning. The design used flipped classroom principles combined with the students’ creation of websites. Two distinct phases in teaching design development in a Norwegian teacher education program are presented, and shortcomings and successes are discussed.
Introduction
For many years, surveys among Norwegian university students have shown that student teachers are the students who use the least time on their studies (Bjaaland et al., 2025; Damen et al., 2017; Hauge and Øygarden, 2024). Where students within disciplines like architecture and engineering claim that they use over 40 h/week on their studies, student teachers declare that they use 15–30 h/week. When we are at our university, teachers of education ask our students to evaluate the time spent on their studies outside class, the difference can range between 5 and 45 h/week. Even though there has been some evidence arguing that the different student groups think differently in estimating hours of work (Chambers, 1992; Gray and Martinussen, 2019; Kember, 2004; Martinussen and Smestad, 2011), it is troublesome and challenging information for teacher educators. The author of this article and colleagues asked themselves what they could do to make student teachers engage more in their studies. We had an idea that there might be three basic challenges that could be addressed. These three were:
• Unclear guidance on what students were expected to do between class sessions
• Too much lecturing and therefore too little time for student activities in classwork
• Not using the possibilities that lie in the digital revolution
With the aim of finding ways to defy habits within these focus areas, we started a project with our new student teachers, studying pedagogy, the first semester of their five-year-long teacher education. The overall research/project question in this article is: How can we enhance the time on task and consequently the quality of student learning? I will describe the way we confronted the problems (two phases), our (diverse) experiences on the journey, and some conclusions from us as designers/teacher educators/researchers, and from the participating students.
Since the special focus in this issue is the humanistic perspective, I feel the urge to say a few words about the learning theory called “humanistic learning.” This theory is more a philosophical idea than teaching techniques (Muhajirah, 2020). The essence of this theory is “humanizing humans” (Aiman et al., 2024; Muhajirah, 2020), the personal growth and full development of each human’s potential, not just intellectually, but also emotionally, creatively, and socially (DeCarvalho, 1991; Johnson, 2014). The basic stance is to cultivate a more holistic, empowering, and transformative approach to education (Kumari, 2024). This could be understood in line with the Bildung-tradition. In both traditions, humans should learn to understand themselves and one another, and experience self-efficacy. It is important to acknowledge and respect students’ inner drive to learn, student-centered learning (Koteswaraiah and Basavanna, 2016; Kumari, 2024), and education should prioritize the process and not the learning outcome. Here Carl Roger’s concept of meaningfulness is important (Johnson, 2014; Koteswaraiah and Basavanna, 2016).
Theoretical background
In Norway, teacher education is a vocational education at the university level. It combines campus education with field placement periods at schools. Our focus was on how to enhance the quality of the campus part. Following the idea of the three basic challenges, they have a didactical/teaching aspect in common. However, at the same time, they fall into different theoretical approaches and various previous research fields. Using the three defined challenges, we hope to narrow the focus and show clearly what is relevant from our perspective. Because of the limited space in this article, the third challenge, “using the possibilities that lie in the digital revolution,” is only described as a part of the first two challenges.
Unclear guidance on what students should do between in-class work
In our ambition to change our teaching design, we believed that the scholars, teacher teams could be blamed for students not working hard enough. If it was our fault, there was probably something teacher educators could do to change it. We thought that we had to show the students more explicitly what was expected and teach them to be university students. One inspiration came from Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams’ flipped learning ideas. In a flipped classroom (FC), also called inverted classroom (Lage et al., 2000), you make room for clearing out misunderstandings, more student activity, and more advanced metacognitively demanding exercises in-class, by demanding that students, prior to in-class work, prepare themselves through listening or watching lectures in, e.g., video-forms, PowerPoint presentations with sound, or reading assigned course literature with the help of quiz-questions (Bergmann and Sams, 2012; Lage et al., 2000). The hope is that the students listen and watch with a pen in their hand, write down confusions, and bring questions about unclearness to class. In class, they can ask the teachers, get help when doing exercises, assignments. The instructor also prepares exercises of different kinds for the in-class work. These exercises are often hands-on work, like experiments and problem-solving, using work-related situations. In the case of teacher education, this could be case work from teacher reality, e.g., figuring out how to act in different dilemmas. The dilemmas could be about how to stimulate motivation in a described pupil, dilemmas concerning class management, or how to assess student work and discuss how different assessments can affect student progress or motivation. Often, these assignments are solved in collaboration with peers, but the instructor is available to enhance learning with challenging questions. Many articles from try-outs of FC report more peer collaboration, students asking more questions in class, perhaps because there are more opportunities for one-on-one interactions in class (Bergmann and Sams, 2012; Lage et al., 2000).
There is a lot of research on FC try-outs in higher education. Lundin et al. (2018) claim in their literature review that the research has several methodological weaknesses and that the effectiveness of FC is not clear (Galindo-Dominguez, 2021; Koh, 2019; McNally et al., 2017; O’Flaherty and Phillips, 2015). There are many case-studies where authors insist on several positive advantages with using FC, e.g., more active learning (Baig and Yadegaridehkordi, 2023; Bishop and Verleger, 2013), higher student engagement and motivation (Baig and Yadegaridehkordi, 2023; Jang and Kim, 2020), coming better prepared to class (Elazab and Alazab, 2015), or higher learning outcomes (Al-Samarraie et al., 2020; Baig and Yadegaridehkordi, 2023; Elazab and Alazab, 2015; Bergmann and Sams, 2012; Galindo-Dominguez, 2021; McCarthy, 2016).
An important success factor in FC is the communication with students. You must secure good communication with students, so that students are informed of the expectations, can access learning material like digital lectures and assessment tools, and be interactive with peers and instructors. Nowadays, this is facilitated by learning management systems (LMS) of different brands (Baig and Yadegaridehkordi, 2023). Researchers have found that good use of an LMS can make the learning process interactive, student-centric, and cater to diverse learner needs (Veluvali and Surisetti, 2022), and that students get good perceptions and attitudes toward the advantages of the LMS (Asyari, 2024; Munasinghe and Wijewardana, 2016). In our design, the use of an LMS was very important. We used it for communication of expectations, sharing information like video lectures, and assignments (more about this below).
Too much lecturing
How we choose to teach is largely influenced and inspired by different learning theories and different views on knowledge. Elazab and Alazab (2015) have commented on the FC as being a unique combination of learning theories that were once thought to be incompatible (Bishop and Verleger, 2013). Some of the incompatibility lies in the different understandings of knowledge, competence, and, of course, the desired competence for the relevant education, which in this case is being a teacher.
There are many ways of looking at knowledge. Bloom et al. (1956) introduced one taxonomy, which was later revised (Krathwohl, 2002). Here, remembering, understanding are low levels of knowledge, and at the top we have analyzing, evaluating, and creating something new. One aspect also important in this taxonomy is application, something that builds a bridge between theory and practical handiwork.
Järnerot and Veelo (2020) have created a model, using Aristoteles three knowledge forms: episteme (scientific-theoretical knowledge), techne (practical productive skills), and phronesis (practical wisdom). Many practitioners and philosophers think of these as hierarchically structured, with the necessity of episteme and techne to achieve phronesis. Järnerot and Veelo (2020) challenge this understanding and see the three knowledge forms as different traits in a three-dimensional construction (see Figure 1). The idea is that phronesis and real-world dilemmas can be the starting point for feeling the need for learning. The use of real-life teacher dilemmas was one important pillar in the design. Those cases were often the center of in-class work or the follow-up work (see more below). The “knowledge in 3D” model (Järnerot and Veelo, 2020) not only sees the three knowledge forms as equivalent, but they also strengthen each other. The ideal is to work with assignments that combine all three knowledge forms, because phronesis makes the learning of both episteme and techne better, just as techne can improve episteme and phronesis. I consider this way of thinking knowledge and competence as the philosophical foundation of our teaching design. This is to some extent in line with the Bildung tradition (e.g., Van Manen, 2015). It has influenced the focus and learning of the importance of general societal and personal learning. Van Manen (2015, p. 204) says that no one ever seemed to find a really good English translation for this tradition.
Figure 1. Episteme (E), Techne (T) and Phronesis (P) are three dimensions of knowledge. A person evolves in all dimensions and together E, T and P build a higher level of knowledge. The open upper right corner signifies the infinity in learning (Järnerot and Veelo, 2020).
I believe that some general knowledge exists, but it is not unbiased or knowledge of an objective world out there. I believe the students construct their knowledge and build schemas, close to Piaget’s thoughts (Høihilder and Sträng, 2015; Skaalvik and Skaalvik, 2021; Stefansson and Karlsdottir, 2022; Säljö, 2024). In a teacher education the educators meet students who have at least 13 years of experience in school, and many therefore believe that they know much about education. A part of a teacher educator’s job is to challenge their schemas, which are based on their pupils’ experiences, with little insight into teacher acquirements. It is also the job of an educator to press students to take the next step, out of a comfort zone (cf. Vygotskij, 1978, 2001).
The students claimed that most of their applicable knowledge came from the training in the field placement. In the field placement, they worked more hands-on, like in a craft tradition. There are a lot of good ways to enhance your knowledge in the craft tradition. Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1999) have shown how knowledge evolves in these settings. Here, the expert/master of the trade is at the center of a learning setting, and new apprentices start as peripheral participants, first observing and doing easy chores. With time and more knowledge, they get more advanced tasks and move closer to the center and greater proficiency. They call this learning theory “situated learning” and important is the development of “communities of practice.” In this setting, the knowledge grows in every direction (in line with the model of Järnerot and Veelo) and the different types of knowledge’s importance are more equivalent. We asked ourselves: Could the educators do something to mimic the learning situated in the field, already on campus?
Project design and research methods
This chapter starts by describing the outlines and circumstances of the project, but since the development of designing the teaching is the focus, I consider the presentation and analysis of this teaching design to be the results of this article.
The participants and the setting
Designers and teacher educators
Three teacher educators (see acknowledgments), teaching pedagogy and special needs education, were involved in phase one of this project. All of us have long experience as teachers in compulsory schools in the Nordic countries. This close link to being a teacher has definitely had an impact on how we think and conduct education as teacher educators. On the one hand, modeling good ways to teach was a prominent ideal; on the other, the experience from school tells us that structure and clarity are important.
In phase two, my two colleagues were given other assignments, and the only one left was the current author. Another colleague proposed a collaboration and a project idea, which I at once saw could be an improvement of our original design. Therefore, we became a team in developing this further.
Students
Both phases involved students of the first semester of a teacher education program for primary school student teachers (year 1–7) in Norway. All teacher educators were responsible for one or two classes and were basically functioning as class teachers. Each class consisted of ca. 40 students. A vast majority of them came directly from upper secondary school, but in every class, there were a handful that had studied shorter courses at university level, folk high school, or done military service. Very few students were over 25 years old. Approximately 75–80% were women. The students were a sample of convenience (Tjora, 2021, p. 297), because the sample consisted of the classes the university administrators had assigned to us. All students were informed about the research work and agreed to participate.
Course description
The first semester of our teacher education introduces the subject “Pedagogy and Student Knowledge 1,” which covers many topics, e.g., the school in the society, class management, learning theories, motivation theories, didactics, assessment, basic skills, aesthetic learning, and introduction to observation and interview as research methods.
Settings
This is a case study (Andersen, 2013; Yin, 2018), since the project took place in one teacher education program in Norway, in one subject, with a limited number of students, teachers, and researchers. To understand and evaluate the study, it is important to give the reader transparent information, e.g., about the setting. The students had two “lessons” (in-class work) every week; each lasted ca. 3 h. The classrooms had the size to fit 40 students, with a whiteboard and possibilities for a digital presentation. The classrooms were flat with tables where you could collaborate. In the first phase, we had smartboards in the classroom, but in phase two, we were at another campus, which did not have smartboards at all. This decreased the opportunities for learning digital tools.
The class teacher divided the class into groups of four. A choice was made to designate the men so there would be one man in every group. In phase one, we handed out one iPad/group.1 In phase two, we worked more with PCs, which every student who attends university in Norway is obliged to have.
Research methods
As briefly mentioned above, we set out on this journey with the desire to change our teaching and, at the same time, foster and help student teachers in their learning process. In that sense, it was a developmental project based on practitioner research (Cochran Smith and Lytle, 2009; Hiim, 2017; Smith, 2016). Practitioner research is intended to solve problems and enhance practice, which was our aim. Since the starting point was an observed dilemma within our teaching and the students’ habits and learning, the design has many similarities to action research and learning processes (McNiff, 2017; Whitehead, 1989). Tiller and Gedda (2017) point out that there are three different ways to conduct school research. You can do research on, in, and with a school. The first (on) implies that researchers are investigating from a distance; the second (in) suggests that the researchers are at the school but as observers, trying not to affect at all. The third (with), you investigate together with the practitioners. We use a fourth form, by being both designers, teacher educators, and researchers, similar to self-study (Moksnes Furu, 2013; Smith, 2016; Zeichner, 2007). Since we have initiated and designed a new teaching design, tried it out, changed and developed it, one could also call it design research (Bjørndal, 2013), which has many similar traits with the practitioner, action, and self-study research. They are all about constructing and reconstructing your own insights, knowledge, and actions.
McNiff (2017, p. 9) claims that action research is about investigating and evaluating the work you do. You ask yourself questions like “Do I need to improve anything?” “How do I improve it?.” This is something that every reflective practitioner (Schön, 1983/1991) constantly asks him/herself. It is a powerful and liberating form of professional inquiry, which is closely linked to one’s personal professional values (McNiff, 2017, p. 10; Carr and Kemmis, 1986). Both action research and design research processes move in spirals with phases of observing-reflecting-planning-acting-evaluating-modifying, which move to a new round in the spiral (Carr and Kemmis, 1986; McNiff, 2017; Moksnes Furu, 2013).
McNiff (2017) continues to say that this makes action researchers “inside researchers” with the aim to generate new knowledge, which is in line with what the practitioners in this project value and feel has been done. The designers/educators have combined the teacher role with a research role (Moksnes Furu, 2013). Inside knowledge is precisely the aim of practitioner research (Brannick and Coghlan, 2007; Eikeland, 2012). With that personal and enhanced insight into the culture that the participants are trying to change comes a deeper understanding of the details of both the culture and the problems at hand, and if the solution actually is feasible in everyday work (Brannick and Coghlan, 2007; Eikeland, 2012). I argue that a blend of research, everyday experience, and discretionary arguments can enhance critical reflection, but naturally, the logical reasoning must be upheld (Andreassen and Tiller, 2021).
The advantage of being a teacher and researcher in one is that one is familiar with the business of the day. That includes both big issues like national guidelines for teacher education and details like the special settings of this University. However, there are some challenges attached to these multiple roles. Being the innovator, the constructor of the problem focus, and the research question, conducting both the implementation and at the same time observing the students and oneself, interpreting the outcome/results, are different roles, and for each role you must take a different perspective (Moksnes Furu, 2013). We believe that we have managed this through open discussions, provoking ourselves and one another in the research group, personal note-taking, and through collecting information from the students, with several evaluation questionnaires throughout the semesters. At the same time, researching your own practice can influence your teaching. Tiller and Gedda (2017) write that when teachers become more inquiring and research in their own practice, it will make them better teachers. The designers of this project aimed to change the content, the exercises, and the attitudes toward both the possibilities in the teacher role as well as the student role. The researching teacher scouts for things that may improve the teaching to the benefit of their students, using good questions and observations (Tiller and Gedda, 2017). The researching teacher not only constructs new knowledge but also designs new actions and is perhaps trying to change the field.
Research quality
Research is both a process and a result (Postholm and Jacobsen, 2025). Good research is signified by a dialog with earlier research, a transparent description of the process, choices made, and reflections on the consequences that it can have on the results. Demands on the quality of research are credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability (Guba, 1981). This research is credible because the project is relevant to the field, we have gathered data in a transparent and relevant manner, and we connect the practice and well-known concepts and theory (Postholm and Jacobsen, 2025). Even though this is a case study, I claim that this research is transferable and relevant to a wider community and other settings. I believe that many will find our endeavors interesting, recognizable, and perhaps worth trying out in their own settings, in line with naturalistic generalization (Stake and Trumbull, 1982). This makes the dependability and confirmability (Lincoln and Guba, 1988) secure and the research trustworthy.
Data collection
We have in total five main ways of collecting data: student surveys, student reflection papers, observations, our teacher journal notes, and our professional discussions. All of them prompted changes in the design.
Student data
Both at the end of the first phase and 3 years into the second phase, we asked the students to answer a questionnaire about their experiences and thoughts on the design. All questionnaires were voluntary digital surveys with mostly open-ended questions or statements using a Likert scale. They were published on an anonymous survey platform where IDs could not be linked.
The questionnaire in phase one was answered by 123 students taking the mandatory subject called “Pedagogy and Student Knowledge,” in the first semester of a five-year-long education. The questions were about motivation, usefulness, practice relevance, learning outcome, the working methods, and time spent on studying.
For the survey evaluating the second phase, we asked 143 first-year primary school student teachers within the subject Pedagogy and Student Knowledge to reflect on how working with creating websites had impacted their understanding of the whole course and their learning outcome on each of the content topics, e.g., motivation, didactics, assessment, and digital competence.110 students answered the survey. As part of the exam a few weeks later, all 143 students were tasked to write a short, anonymous reflection paper on their own learning process and the process in the group (max. 350 words). The opinions revealed by the students in the survey and the reflection papers corresponded to a high degree.
Teacher educator data
We educators wrote journal notes during the semesters. We had regular weekly meetings among the teachers. In these meetings, we shared experiences, discussed possible interpretations of outcomes, and what ought to be changed or maintained. The teacher data collection did not really stop at the end of the semester, which means that reflections that have emerged later will also be a data source. Sometimes, insights have come because we ourselves have learned more, we have found research that can enlighten some aspects, or I/we have found new lenses or angles to use (cf. Eggebø, 2020).
Data analysis
Data analysis in practitioner, action, self-study, or design research can be difficult to describe. All these related research forms are iterative processes, like being on a treasure hunt. The data analysis is constantly “on the move,” evolving and moving back and forth, trying new paths, perspectives, but continuously having to go back to retry other roads. Silverman (2014, in Eggebø, 2020) describes this qualitative analytical process as exploring a new territory without a map. For instance, since the starting point is a challenge in the experienced world of practice, theory might not be there from the beginning, but is found later in the process. This resembles what Eggebø (2020) describes as a collective qualitative analysis. Eggebø (2020) accentuates that modern research is often done in research groups, yet analysis is usually presented as an individual endeavor, despite the participants’ close collaboration. The analysis of the data and the processes leading to this article had preliminary phases where collective analysis was crucial. The colleagues in the research team discussed and challenged observations, experiences, choices, and findings. All of this opened for new interpretations, challenging our understanding time and time again in an abductive process. During the design process, our roles were designers and participant observers (Gold, 1958; Postholm and Jacobsen, 2025). Journal notes can help you remember and can help you, both there and later, see the dynamics in the developmental process (Levin, 2017). In this article, focusing on the design development, I try to reveal the thoughts on the choices we made in different stages in the two phases.
However, already during the project, the students’ opinions were extremely important. Some reactions are found in the practitioners’ field notes, but the information from the surveys provided a deeper understanding. The investigations of the surveys were done inductively; color coding statements made in the surveys, using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006), similar to an open coding (e.g., Strauss and Corbin, 1998), where we identified extracts in the data material, in order to be able to identify and analyze various themes that appeared in the data material. Later, we used open and axial coding (Cohen et al., 2018; Postholm and Jacobsen, 2025), where we went back and forth in the datasets. This process meant organizing or conceptualizing the many themes mentioned by students into broader categories. The surveys from phases one and two were treated separately in the first scanning and have been seen as two different datasets throughout the research.
The students’ inputs can underline or undermine findings from the other sources, but the important thing was to triangulate between our data sources to be as trustworthy as possible. However, it is important to understand that this article takes the perspective of us, especially me; that means a designer’s perspective. It is important to realize that the results are my (and partly my colleagues’) interpretations.
As briefly mentioned above, the research still keeps evolving years after the project and data collection phases. Both the teaching design and the interpretations are constantly in my mind, looking for new theories or perspectives to connect to. Using FC as a lens is my doing, and the discussion comes down to my thinking and is my responsibility.
The results are the design of our project
The results in this article are the presentation of the design, the road getting there, and the experiences worth sharing. Hopefully, this can help others in designing modern humanistic teaching. The development of the design consists of (so far) two clearly separate phases. Below, these two phases will be described, including analyses of our successes and shortcomings. Focus is on the designer’s perspective, but that is based on all data, like the students’ statements, the educators’ journal notes, observations, and research discussions.
Phase one
Building on our experiences and aims, the three designers/educators sought to find a better way to inform students about a good learning cycle. Another aim was to teach them more about digital tools. The educators applied for some local funding, which was sufficient to buy 40 iPads for this project and to go on two inspirational trips. We had heard of the good use of an LMS in line with our aim at the University of Aarhus, in Denmark. Inspired by Tobias Alsted Nielsen (Center for Undervisning og Læring at the University of Aarhus) (personal communication), Fossvoll, Järnerot, and Skaalvik developed this model (Figure 2).
Figure 2. The working cycle of the project (Fossvoll et al., 2019).
As the reader can see, the model is clearly inspired by FC, but more distinct assignments for after-the-class work/follow-up work were added. Since the students were expected to come prepared, having read the course literature, seen video lectures, there were some traits of blended learning.
Communicating with the students, especially about prework
We used the LMS of the university. This was Blackboard, and it was the first year the university used this LMS, so we were all a bit of beginners. This was not necessarily a bad thing, because it made it possible to be creative from the start, rearranging many of the filing hierarchy features. That the students should find information with as few clicks as possible was an important desire. Therefore, the first click should be in finding the topic/week they were looking for. So, the first thing they met on the LMS was the weeks with their specific topics (in the black part on the left in Figure 3).
Figure 3. The LMS feature, with the topics to the left. If you clicked on one topic, you found information (here example from “week 42 Didactics”) about the learning-goal for the topic in orange, and files for preparatory work (prework), class work and the follow-up work (English translation in the pink boxes).
In the beginning, the information in the files was just written as bullet points, not very inspirational and frankly, quite boring (Figure 4).
Figure 4. Bullet point list from one of the earlier preworks of the semester.
After some weeks, we began to use the bulletin board “padlet” (Figure 5) to gather the information, which was much more inviting and very useful because we could use not only pictures, but it was easy to link to other information or even import material into the padlet. It was also much easier to add or change information in the bulletin boards than on the LMS.
Figure 5. An example of sharing information using a bulletin board.
The LMS had other tools, and we tried using some of them methodically, i.e., the discussion board, blogs, and some assessment tools. The students were reluctant to use them, since everyone in the whole subject could read the discussion boards and blogs, and not only the members of each group. We could not solve this problem.
Class work
In class, the idea was to use most of the time
• Modeling good teaching exercises, tools (e.g., world cafés, discussions, panel debates, gallery walks, role-plays, critical thinking exercises, problem solving, explorative assignments, etc.).
• Giving them assignments (cases, dilemmas) where we believed collaboration was essential for augmenting the learning.
• Get them acquainted with some iPad applications/tools.
One of our main shortcomings and mistakes was that we could not stop lecturing. As educators, we did not trust the students to come prepared and therefore, we lectured about the same things as in the preparatory work. The educators were more successful in modeling teaching, actively using different designs. Another part of the coursework was to always let the students get acquainted with some kind of digital app. The learning content of the app-work was the focus of the week, e.g., making digital mind-maps of learning theories, making illustrative animated films of a motivational theory, or using the book creator app to share information about assessment. Since they only had one iPad/group, this had to be done in class and as a team.
At the end of each week, there was a group quiz. This was a way to summarize the topic of the week. The best group of the semester was to get an unknown reward. Some groups or even group members turned very competitive, making different aspirations a problem in the group. Other groups did not care much about the prize, and the quiz questions inspired really good clarifying discussions. They also took the chance to ask us, teacher educators.
Follow-up work
The plan was to assign follow-up work after every lesson, which meant coming up with a minimum of two meaningful assignments every week. We were ambitious with different reflective individual assignments, like “write a reflection paper and tell about your motivations to become a teacher,” “write a letter to your favorite teacher and tell him/her what was so fabulous.” Sometimes the follow-up work was to finish collaborative work that they had started in the class work, e.g., making a video about class management, or preparing their field practice by designing an interview guide to be used when interviewing their practice teacher.
This was far too ambitious both for us educators and the students. We ran out of good assignments when we had not prepared a collection of exercises before the semester; our creative ore soon turned dry; the assignments became more of a quantitative necessity than a qualitative help. It also became a far too heavy burden to respond to all these short tasks and show the students the respect that their work earned.
Summarizing phase one
As stated above, two colleagues in phase one went on to new assignments after this semester. I thought that we had been successful in several ways, but I was so irritated that we had sent ambiguous signals when we, on the one hand, told them to watch or listen to our digital presentations, and on the other hand, lectured on a similar topic in class work. I also felt that the follow-up work was not successful (see Table 1). An important goal for the project was that the students should work throughout the semester, and not procrastinate studying till a few weeks before exams, as we had heard students say and something research supported (Bjaaland et al., 2025; Damen et al., 2017; Hauge and Øygarden, 2024).
Table 1. Reflections from phase one.
At the start of the following year, a colleague of mine presented an idea of hers. She suggested that the students should make websites, where they would make different pages or elements of every topic in the syllabus. I was enthusiastic because I saw that this would address some of my objections to the phase one design.
Phase two
Setting
The classes still had classwork twice every week. Each lesson/seminar was ca. 3 h. We still divided the class into groups of 4–5 students. Each group was to create a website for a chosen recipient, preferably a layman, like parents or newcomers to Norway. We suggested Google Sites, but it was up to the group to choose the tool. During the semester, they would get assignments and demands to use digital tools. Results from the assignments would be uploaded to the website. The website substituted all the exercises of the follow-up work. More about this below (see also Table 2).
Table 2. Reflections from phase two.
Preparatory work
In phase two, the same working cycle was used, including clear information and the preparatory possibilities. We created more or improved some of the preparatory work; the use of the bulletin boards was refined.
In-class work
I tried to stop lecturing, really signaling that the students were expected to come prepared. After having started each classwork with modeling some kind of teaching game or inspirational warm-up, often about the content of the prework, the floor was opened for questions that students might have come up with during the preparatory work. There were very few questions, which was frustrating, considering the success this seemed to be in other examples of the flipped classroom (Bergmann and Sams, 2012).
With less time on lecturing, there was naturally more time for student-active work during the seminars. Besides modeling teaching, there was time for exercises where they could practice specific teacher skills, e.g., using their voice for storytelling, observing their own use of vocabulary and ability to explain, or focusing on aesthetic and/or embodied teaching strategies. One of the important things was to make sure that the class work was used for teamwork activities, because the educators believed the learning would be enhanced by social learning activities.
Usually, the follow-up work was initiated during the lessons. The educators did not give instructions about the different digital applications they could use. The students had to find out a lot by exploring in an inductive way. When they were stuck and asked, we often sent the question on to fellow students. After a while, the class became adapted to sharing knowledge and more open to asking one another. However, with the new design of website making, the follow-up work was less steered. This opened up more creativity on behalf of the students, as well as more self-directed work. At the same time, this organization put less strain on the teacher educators’ creativity.
The socially challenging effects of the weekly quizzes resulted in skipping this in phase two.
Follow-up work
In phase two, we did not give the students short assignments after every lesson. We designed two tasks for every topic. These tasks were collaborative endeavors, e.g., when making a podcast or a film, the contribution of all participants had to be heard or seen. The educators tried to follow their groupwork closely, to see that it worked as intended.
The directions for the assignment clearly stated that they had to use digital tools to create the posts on the website. That means that they had to transform the theory into another modality than simple text. Here, they could use book creator, mind maps, animated filmmaking, podcasts, self-made films, and digital posters. The process of transforming contained many aspects of lower and higher order thinking, e.g., reading, understanding, showing connections between practical use and theory, analyzing, critically evaluating what was most important, creativity, and transforming from one modality to another and from an academic into a layman’s language (Bloom et al., 1956; Krathwohl, 2002). The students emphasized this as an important part of enhanced understanding, which was in line with the educators’ impression. The students used more professional language throughout the semester.
In addition to the work cycle, we proposed that the means to achieve the learning objectives would probably contain the need for the groups to meet at least once outside class every week (digitally or physically).
Discussion
Returning to the research focus about how educators could design teaching that would enhance students’ time on task, which consequently would increase the students’ learning.
I claim that helping the students with clearer, specified instructions or tips made the students use more time on their studies between classwork. This indicates that university educators, teacher educators in our case, are important when it comes to making student teachers study more effective over time. Here the LMS was a helpful artifact (Asyari, 2024; Baig and Yadegaridehkordi, 2023; Munasinghe and Wijewardana, 2016; Veluvali and Surisetti, 2022). But it did not seem to be enough with clear guidance, because the majority of the students in phase one, still said that they studied less than the expected number of hours. Students need more inspiration or guidance than just clear information. The students in phase two claimed they worked more hours. This could be the consequence of augmented clarity of the framing, clear guidance on how to organize the process (e.g., telling them to meet once a week outside class time), but also handing over responsibility and trusting the students to be self-directed in the details. There are clear traits of Deci and Ryan (2012) self-determination theory here. The students were given some autonomy, and they said they experienced increased competence and the groups inspired a sense of belonging, relatedness to both the fellow students and to a broader community of practice.
The pronounced guidance responsibility placed on the educator might be an unusual thought, considering the age of the students, their assumed experience of studying from the school context and that higher education is optional, and therefore, the students should have an inner drive to learn. Unfortunately, this is not in line with our experience or Norwegian research. The students have problems with self-direction, when the syllabus is large, the amount of course literature is abundant, and the exam/test is 4 months in the future. Their study rituals and techniques from earlier are often not so effective here. The techniques seem to focus on some surface learning and/or, e.g., Bloom et al. (1956), lower levels of learning, like remembering facts/concepts. Many students would benefit from guidance on new techniques and different aspects of what learning and competence are. However, at the start, they are not aware of this and keep on with old routines. To manage the plentiful course literature, our students divided it among themselves. When they divide it, their old strategies (like taking notes of concepts, names), their time-consuming strategies function. While dividing the literature is not in line with our hopes for them, they have added something of their own – sharing notes, bringing in an extra dimension to the collaboration at the suggested weekly meetings, by presenting and discussing the understanding of the texts, helping each other, deepening the groupwork to become a community of practice (Wenger, 1999). Several students commented positively on this, admitting that it helped them not to procrastinate. Even though their solutions ended up with some good, I believe the students need to be guided to become university students, and that guiding is the educators’ responsibility.
The distinct model, with pronounced instructions (both in prework and follow-up work), helped students to realize expectations, but also how to meet requirements. This is in line with much of the research of projects within FC endeavors (Al-Samarraie et al., 2020; Baig and Yadegaridehkordi, 2023; Bergmann and Sams, 2012; Bishop and Verleger, 2013; Elazab and Alazab, 2015; Galindo-Dominguez, 2021; Jang and Kim, 2020; Lage et al., 2000; McCarthy, 2016).
Even if Lundin et al. (2018) and others (like Galindo-Dominguez, 2021; Koh, 2019; McNally et al., 2017; O’Flaherty and Phillips, 2015) alert us to methodological weaknesses in many of the case studies and that this current practitioner research could be accused of similar methodological weaknesses, I claim that the similar results (cf. naturalistic generalization) from the many FC projects in higher education, signal that clear instructions for prework/preparatory work is a help for many students. One aspect is that different students learn in different ways, and that digital lectures can work for an inclusive education. Many different approaches in lecturing are in line with universal education and a humanistic perspective. Yet, other FC researchers have identified students who seem to prefer en-face-lecturing and generally are more comfortable with traditional educational teaching. McNally et al. (2017) calls them flip resistors (Sosa Díaz et al., 2021; Elazab and Alazab, 2015). That could be due to being well-known and comfortable in more traditional ways of being a student, or that these students are metacognitively more active in what is often considered a passive recipient role.
A reasonable question is whether it is humanistic to make students work harder. I say – yes, because the aim of an education is learning, in this case, learning the teacher profession. Therefore, educators have an obligation to guide students to learn as much as possible. Even though higher education is voluntary, I believe that once a student has signed up, it is the role of the instructor and institute to see to it that they are able to learn more than they thought they had to, or to put it in another way, also things they did not know were a part of the job. Hopefully, teacher educators, as experienced professionals, have insight that they invite students to take part in. However, because of their long experience as students, the educators must convince them to open their minds to new ways of thinking about school and about the teacher’s role. I believe it is educators’ humanistic obligation to challenge them, press them out of a comfort zone (cf. Vygotskij, 1978, 2001), and that some attempts to force work on them are justifiable. Having a humanistic approach is not the same as always giving in to students or accepting their views on schooling and the teacher’s role. If we let the students steer too much, we might end up replicating a traditional school, which does not benefit future children growing up. Teacher educators should demand higher ambitions for themselves.
One of the reasons that this working model invites more time on task for the students is that we, as the campus partners, have broadened our thoughts on what our contribution to teacher education is. Traditionally, we have left much of the skill and practice training to the field placement partners. By taking a greater responsibility for these practical features, we guarantee that all students are introduced to a great variety of teaching design models, required skills, and are invited into the teacher community. This can be more random in the field placement; a few get everything they need there, but quite many only get a partial picture of being a teacher. Therefore, I argue that making the campus part more practical is an equalizing trait, which adjusts for more equity between students. An education should compensate for differences in personal traits. A few are born to be teachers, but most of us can learn to teach, to think like a teacher. It is an aim of education to even out the differences between natural talents and those who have to work hard to become good. That is a humanistic stand (DeCarvalho, 1991; Johnson, 2014; Kumari, 2024).
There is, however, a limit to how much you can ask the students to do, how high ambitions educators can have for them, and how normative the teaching should be. To meet this difficulty, we tried to create interwoven assignments and teaching that combine different teacher qualities we meant the students should evolve, in line with Järnerot and Veelo (2020) 3D-knowledge model. All teaching had a theoretical content piece, a skill-developing part, and an attitude angle. The content came from the aims expressed in the syllabus. The skills came from our thoughts on necessary needs, but also from a variety of studied examples in research or even on YouTube. The collaborative working methods inspired them early on to become a part of a team and a community of practice. This community was not only for the four group members working with a website or for creating a good learning environment at the class level, but inviting them into the teacher community at large. I like this idea of respecting the students as future teachers from day one, in line with the idea of legitimate peripheral practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991), and I believe it inspires to the willingness to put more time into the task.
Moving traditional in-class work, like lecturing, trying to transfer knowledge, to outside class time, opened up time to work differently in class. We used the time when we had students together to focus on collaborative work, where the students on the one hand could learn collaboration as a bonus in other exercises, on the other, got insight to how others could think, expand their own knowledge (Järnerot and Lund, 2025) and finally, that disagreement was not as scary as the Norwegian culture might imply. Another possibility was to have more time to model different teaching in action. I tried to use that possibility and introduced many both shorter and longer exercises, e.g., world cafés, gallery walks, different warmups, games, role-play, and debates. However, when the students came to school in the field placement, they hardly tried any of the examples. Therefore, after a year, we gave them an assignment where they had to try at least one of the examples they had met during the semester on campus. This turned out quite well. It was not just that they tried something. Sometimes it did not work, so they had to adjust the example to the new pupils and setting. Therefore, they learned a lot about (re)planning teaching and discussing what makes things work or not, and changes that could be made; In short, they practiced reflection. Again, our initial ideas had positive side effects, here learning implicit things as a community of practice and collaboration skills (Järnerot and Lund, 2025).
In class, we could clarify things in line with FC traditions. They usually have some time to plan for the website assignment. Here, we educators could watch how the groups worked and give help if the groups were malfunctioning. In class, we also demonstrated implicitly how to build a good learning environment, how to manage classes.
For the designer researchers, it became evident that the change of the follow-up work to creating websites was much more inspiring than the initial exercises. This is probably due to the increased wholeness, a more meaningful approach with clear connections to realities for teachers, and the many possibilities for options, freedom of choice (e.g., how to solve assignments, what digital tools to use, when to do it, what to focus on), and signaling that we trusted them to make good decisions. I believe that this focus on the process is an important success factor for the students, putting more time on task. I recognize that they might not have done it without us pushing them, with compulsory demands, because being pushed out of the comfort zone and forced to learn new competencies is hard work. I would say that the majority of students would not have tried without our demands and our guidance, but almost everyone was pleased and grateful at the end of the term. The focus on the processual work in contrast to studying to pass an exam is definitely something that qualifies for a humanistic approach (Koteswaraiah and Basavanna, 2016). Moreover, the chances for embodied, enactive or aesthetic learning, to be creative, use your whole body, all senses, are features that have a very humanistic touch (Aiman et al., 2024; Johnson, 2014; Kumari, 2024; Muhajirah, 2020).
Our working model lays a foundation for clear guidance and distinct information, assignments, and/or chores. Our working model is a type of FC, but we have broadened the idea to suit teacher education and perhaps the Norwegian culture. I recommend helping students become students and guiding them in understanding the complexity of both the student and teacher roles. Framing the follow-up work opened new possibilities for time on task, explorative learning, inspiration, digital competence skills, studying skills, and working with attitudinal aspects. Combining many competencies in each task mimicked real life and was an effective way to use the limited time we and the students had.
Finally, how much of a humanistic learning is there in something so steered by us, teacher educators? Well, I think that I have argued for many humanistic perspectives above, when explaining my thoughts on how this design invites to learning the profession and becoming a part of a community. In addition, I think that the design is in line with seeing learning as a wholeness, letting each individual evolve several parts of themselves, in line with the Bildung tradition (Van Manen, 2015). This view on learning is also in line with Järnerot and Veelo (2020) thoughts in their “Knowledge in 3D” design, where theoretical knowledge (episteme), skills (techne), and pedagogical tact and attitudes (phronesis) are evenly valued, and contribute and strengthen the full learning.
Limitations and future research
There are limitations to our research. We are “natives” designing and researching ourselves. This could lead to biased research and conclusions. To meet this challenge, I have tried to be transparent both as a designer, educator, and researcher. These are important factors to ensure clarity for fellow practitioners and researchers, and to make the design and research trustworthy. The “native” factor is important in recognizing the challenges we like to address, as designers, and that is a good thing. The native stand gives me lenses with extra clarity to understand what is happening, but it can also make conclusions turbid. To meet this, I have built on earlier research, seen similarities, which strengthen the naturalistic generalization (Guba, 1981). It is important to recognize that this article is the designer’s perspective, and even though I build on several data materials, from students and colleagues, it ends up being my interpretation of the data and the lived experience.
This design functioned well in our context. It would have been interesting to see how it would work in other contexts, that is, other educations, other cultures. There is also the need to analyze several aspects. In this article, we have touched on the understanding of knowledge and of becoming a student. However, Elazab and Alazab (2015) claim that FC builds on learning theories that are incompatible. Analyzing our design using learning theories as lenses could give us more insight into success factors. Another possible angle would be to compare more exactly the teacher qualities desired in the Norwegian context with the learning outcomes the students claim they get.
Data availability statement
The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.
Author contributions
AJ: Writing – original draft, Investigation, Formal analysis, Conceptualization, Methodology.
Funding
The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article. We had some internal (NTNU, so called HP2-funds, focus innovative teaching) funding for phase one of our developmental project.
Acknowledgments
I have conducted the development of these teaching designs in collaboration with colleagues at the teacher education at NTNU (the Norwegian University for science and technology), in the first phase, Ellen Fossvoll and Cecilie Skaalvik were important contributors. In the second phase, Anne Bonnevie Lund was my most important collaborator.
Conflict of interest
The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Generative AI statement
The authors declare that no Gen AI was used in the creation of this manuscript.
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Footnotes
1. ^In those days (2017) it was not so common with i-pads in school. In later years it has become very common for schools to give every pupil an i-pad already in the first grade in Norway.
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Keywords: flipped classroom, website creation, designing teaching, knowledge acquisition, learning management system (LMS), teacher education
Citation: Järnerot A (2025) Designing higher education to promote more time on studies and divergent learning outcomes: an instructional designer’s perspective. Front. Educ. 10:1697114. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1697114
Edited by:
Halvdan Haugsbakken, Østfold University College, NorwayReviewed by:
Nuno Ricardo Oliveira, Institute of Education and Sciences (ISEC Lisboa), PortugalEzekiel Akotuko Ayimbila, C. K. Tedam University of Technology and Applied Sciences, Ghana
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*Correspondence: Anna Järnerot, YW5uYS5qYXJuZXJvdEBudG51Lm5v