Netflip: The Teaching of the Future Is Already in Class

In her mind, lessons can become like episodes of a Netflix series: you end up watching the whole season in one sitting, because you can't wait to find out how it ends. This the Netflip model, as Gaia Rubera, director of the Bocconi Marketing Department calls it, and she adopted it for her classes in Social Marketing and Computer Vision during this troubled period.

"I have adopted a new model which I have termed Netflip. It is a mix between the 'flipped model', whereby the more theoretical lessons are asynchronous while the applied ones are live, and the 'Netflix' model, whereby students can watch all the lessons whenever they want. In practice", explains Professor Rubera," before the initial lesson, I uploaded the videos for all the theoretical lessons of the course on the Blackboard platform, so that students can study them at the speed they prefer, potentially even watching all the lessons in a single week. Once a week we meet, always online, to discuss the week's topic and turn it into practice". On Blackboard, there are also forums for each lesson, where students can ask questions and answer the questions posed by their peers. "If the question remains unanswered for more than 48 hours, I'll answer it myself."

It is a teaching method that immediately proved successful and which she would have gladly used also before the pandemic struck. Perhaps the times were not ripe, but the emergency seems to have accelerated the process. "The students now come to the lesson much better prepared, no one is left behind. And we always manage to complete the syllabus. I have asked students if they would like to go back to synchronous lessons and they all gave a resolute no", continues Gaia Rubera. "The only aspect that worried me was the lack of interaction with students, but thanks to the forum we solved this problem too. I would like to maintain this lesson mode even when things go back to normal, perhaps by reserving in-person meetings for discussions of weekly topics".

Alessandra D'Apolito, a student enrolled in the second year of the MSc in Marketing Management confirms that the new mode of teaching and learning is successful and appreciated by students: "For a course like this, with a strong IT component, it is a solution that allows me to prepare better for class. However, the weekly occasion dedicated to correcting the exercises and asking the professor questions is fundamental, since it's the only real interaction with our instructor and an our classmates. So in this respect, like most people I cannot wait to return to attend courses in the University's classrooms".