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IPA stands for Information, Practice, and Application.
However, it mainly revolves around the idea of Independent Application, whereby it equips the learners with skills like problem-solving, critical thinking, independent learning as well as experience.
Old education system with its lack of independent thinking, cramming, textbooks, and physical classrooms were pushed back when Modern Computing lifted its head in the 1970s. It brought with it ebooks, online lectures, social media, internet, and much more.
IPA is just the next step in this revolution.
It uses the Flip Classroom Method which is based on the idea that quality information comprises five to ten percent of a child’s learning, practice thirty to forty percent, whereby application makes up the sixty to eighty percent.
Therefore, in this modern approach, lectures are high-quality content videos and audios, shared with the students a day before the actual class. Students study the material at home, as if they are studying in a class and think about the problems and solve quizzes in class as if they are doing homework.
So the classroom is Flipped with the home.
Because a learner’s learning is more important nowadays than a teacher’s teaching, Flip Classroom allows the teachers to engage students in online independent activities and quizzes. It helps them monitor the learning issues, both with a single student and with the whole class.
Apart from this, IPA focuses on strengthening core concepts in minds of all students equally through the application, therefore, there is no need for an examination system.
And not to forget, IPA works equally well for college and university students. If they practice their concepts along with learning theory, they will already have Experience at the time of graduation.
To practice this approach, students need to have productive learning skills, flexible learning methods, and lots and lots of applications.
As for teachers, they should help students use computers and the internet more positively (like online group Homeworks and question boards) and give them more experience. In the age of IT, they can find information themselves.