SSRN 3398178
SSRN 3398178
SSRN 3398178
ABSTRACT
Key Words: Flipped classroom; Traditional lectures; Student Feedback; Pedagogical models;
Higher Education
INTRODUCTION
In the Middlesex University Strategy 2017-2022, one of the key aims is to “undertake
high quality research, practice and knowledge exchange that benefit our students.”
(Middlesex University, 2017, pp.9). The researcher undertook a research of testing modern
pedagogical models that would correspond to the needs of millennials. An initial study
(Seereekissoon, 2018) was conducted to test whether Flipped Classroom (FC) teaching model
can be implemented in the BA (Hons) Advertising, Public Relations and Media (APRM)
programme at Middlesex University Mauritius (MUM). Although the research concluded that
this pedagogical model can be used, there were areas of future research. Among these
recommendations, it was proposed to conduct similar studies across different disciplines and
reflect on whether students would still prefer flipped classroom over traditional teaching
models or not. In addition, there was room for more research on how to encourage students to
attend the online lectures prior to class.
Literature review
Bishop and Verleger (2013) defined the flipped classroom as “an educational technique
that consists of two parts: interactive group learning activities inside the classroom, and direct
computer-based individual instruction outside the classroom.” Millennials are observed to be
always connected to virtual worlds and FC should correspond to them. Another definition of
this type of teaching is that it is “a pedagogical approach in which direct instruction moves
from the group learning space to the individual learning space, and the group space is
transformed into a dynamic, interactive learning environment where the educator guides
students as they apply concepts and engage creatively in the subject matter” (Flipped
Learning Network, 2014. Basically, FC is like an inverted classroom compared to a face-to-
Traditionally, students are used to being taught face to face. The lecturer would come in
class, deliver the lecture and provide exercises to test the assimilation of knowledge.
However, it has been observed that students’ attention can be easily distracted nowadays
Often, students are caught staring at their smartphones or tablets while the lecturer is
delivering the lecture. Studies (Elmore, 2015; Gibson et al., 2014) have proven that the
Generation Z and Millennials cannot disconnect and have the ability of multitasking. The
flipped classroom was considered as a quite successful pedagogical tool to correspond to the
needs of the millennials (Roehl et al, 2013). It is important to understand how a flipped
session is created and what happens to the lecturer.
Studies (Milman, 2012; Seereekissoon, 2018) have demonstrated that during cases
where flipped lectures are used as teaching tool, there is the risk that students would not
Research objectives
This research aims to investigate some gaps left in the initial study (Seereekissoon,
2018) to improve on the implementation of flipped classroom. In addition, literature shows
that there is not much research at interdisciplinary level. Therefore, main research objectives
are as follows:
• Compare students’ perception of flipped classroom at interdisciplinary level
• Understand students’ preference between flipped and traditional teaching
• Identify potential strategies in improving students’ engagement with flipped classroom
METHOD
One of the key values of Middlesex University Mauritius (MUM) is to put students
first. Therefore, it is important to gather feedback from students on their preferred mode of
teaching before/during the implementation of flipped classroom. Compared to the initial
study (Seereekissoon, 2018), a sample of first year undergraduate (UG) students from two
programmes were targeted; BA (Hons) Advertising, Public Relations and Media (APRM) and
BA (Hons) Business Management (BM). Both modules run over a period of 24 weeks with
face to face contact. A practical production class was tested in the APRM programme while a
theoretical class was tested in the BM programme. This enabled the researcher to compare
the impact of using FC on two different learning content. The practical production class of
APRM was on how to use a specialist software whereas the theoretical class of BM was
concepts in marketing.
Research design
A survey research design was adopted for this study. According to Cohen et al., (2011)
one of the uses of surveys is to collect data on attitudes and preferences. An online survey
was used to collect feedback on the perception of students. This method would be convenient
to reach respondents and they could complete it anywhere and anytime.
A lecture was created on PowerPoint presentation for both modules. In the initial study
(Seereekissoon, 2018), students highlighted that the video and sound quality were not of good
quality. Therefore, it was important to find an alternative way of recording voice. The
texttospeech.com platform was used to create a voice over, which was inserted as audio in the
PowerPoint presentation. Then, it was saved as a macro-enabled show and uploaded on the
Moodle platform of MUM (MyUnihub.com). Students were briefed on the research and FC
model one week before. They were asked to watch the online lecture. In addition, the latter
had to complete an exercise before coming to class, to test whether they actually watched the
online lecture. Following the flipped classroom, students were asked to fill in the online
survey to provide comments on this teaching method.
Sampling
The Advertising, Public Relations and Media programme (Year 1 cohort) consists of 27
students and Business Management programme (Year 1 cohort) consists of 50. All the
Ethical considerations
The following research ethics were taken into consideration:
• Informed consent: A voluntary sampling was carried out whereby those who consented
only participated in the survey.
• Anonymity: The respondents were asked to answer the questions anonymously. Data such
as name and demographics were not collected.
RESULTS
Students’ perception on Flipped Classroom
27 out of the 50 students participated in the Business Management programme and 15
out of the 27 students participated in the Advertising, Public Relations and Media programme
surveys. For both programmes, it was the first time that they were taught using flipped
classroom (FC) model. It is interesting to note the difference in the attitude towards FC
(Table 1) from students of both programmes. 100% of the respondents enjoyed this
pedagogical model in the APRM programme although it was a bit the opposite in the BM
(33.3% enjoyed but 66.7% did not enjoyed).
Table 1: Students’ attitude on the Flipped lecture
Student’s enjoyed FC APRM BM
Yes 15 9
No - 18
One possible reason that can explain the difference of attitude (Table 1) could be
related to the content being taught. While attending a lecture on how to use a specialist
software, there is likelihood that some students might not assimilate everything at the first
time. Flipped lectures can be watched several times (Abeysekera and Dawson, 2015),
compared to traditional face to face lecture (unless it is video recorded). The following
finding can help in understanding why students liked FC.
Students were asked to rate how far they believed the flipped lecture was useful in
helping them watching the lecture several times; accessing everywhere; accessing at
convenient time; viewing lectures of good quality and; not having to move physically to the
Campus to attend the session. Most of the students from APRM completely agreed that the
ability to access the lecture at their convenient time and several times was helpful (Figure 1).
Some of them also agreed that the capability of accessing the flipped lecture anywhere was
useful for them (Figure 1). This finding relates to a recent study on the testing of FC in a
multimedia production class (Choi and Lee, 2018) found that students mentioned that the
self-paced and repeated access, review in class and flexible time and place were the benefit
of this teaching model. For some reason, some of them disagreed that the quality of the
flipped was good.
Face-to-Face Classroom 10 21
For both programmes, there is a preference for the traditional pedagogical method. This
is quite surprising. Even if, millennials have a preference for technological devices (Gibson et
al, 2014), they preferred the face-to-face classroom. The flipped classroom teaching method
is quite new in Mauritius. All the students attended this pedagogical method for the first time.
Although some students preferred the flipped classroom in the BM programme, it seems that
most of the students are flip resisters (McNally et al, 2017). The next finding can provide
answers as to why there is a preference of one method to the other.
Students were asked what they did not liked about flipped classroom (Table 3). This
question was formulated to identify any areas that can be considered for the improvement of
this pedagogical method.
For both programmes, it was found that students preferred traditional teaching method
because of the direct interaction they had with the lecturer. Some of them thought that it was
easier to understand the taught topic during a face-to-face lecture (Table 3). The flipped
online session eliminated the lecturer being infront of the class delivering the lecture and
explaining about both topics (the use of a specialist software for APRM students and
marketing concepts for BM students). In both the practical production and theoretical content,
there was a preference for the face-to-face lecture.
Moreover, majority students, from both the BA (Hons) Advertising, Public Relations
and Media and the BA (Hons) Business Management programme, preferred the traditional
face-to-face lectures (Table 2). The respondents preferred the traditional pedagogical method
because of the direct interaction with the lecturer (66.7% from APRM and 50% from BM
students) and better understanding of topic (33.3% from APRM and 37.5% from BM
students). These findings relate to the flip resisters category from the study conducted by
McNally et al. (2017) on flipped classroom. Moreover, Dehghanzadeh and Jafaraghee (2018),
in their study comparing traditional and FC, also found that one of the limitations of FC was
the limited amount of time for the instructor’s lecture in classroom. Another study (Yilmaz,
2017) has shown that e-learning readiness was a major predictor on how students were
satisfied and motivated to engage with flipped classroom models.
On the other hand, students from both programmes agreed that the ability to access
flipped lectures anywhere and at their convenient time was useful for them (Figure 1 and
Figure 2). In addition, this pedagogical method can be implemented when unforeseen
circumstances (such as natural calamities like cyclone or torrential rain in Mauritius or
elsewhere, etc) prevent the lecturer from conducting face-to-face lectures. As it is important
Future research may, also, address how to encourage flip resisters (McNally et al.,
2017) or those who have low e-learning readiness (Yilmaz, 2017) to adopt this inverted
learning approach in regions/countries where flipped classroom is newly introduced. As
proposed by some researchers (Akçayur and Akçayur, 2018; McLaughlin et al., 2016),
students need to be given clear instructions on how they should use their pre-class time and
receive suitable feedback as they study off-campus and they need to be encouraged to take
notes of unclear aspect of the lectures to be discussed with the lecturer afterwards. Other
strategies could, also, be taken into consideration besides providing proper briefing. This
study was conducted in two programmes. A similar research can be considered across
different disciplinary level (Konjin et al., 2018). For instance, during one or more sessions,
Universities can consider flipping all their classes in different programmes. The fact that this
pedagogical method would be tested in all programmes, flip resisters can be motivated to
engage more. As proposed by Yilmaz (2017), besides providing briefing, technological
acceptance model could be considered. The media and tools can have simple and user-
friendly interface to create motivation and acceptance of technology use.
Moreover, to make up for the lack of interaction from the lecturer (Table 3) during the
flipped lectures, more group exercises can be carried out under the supervision of the lecturer.
In addition, these exercises would enable the lecturer to know if the topic taught during the
flipped online lectures were understood or not by the students. In addition, rather than
creating online lectures with voice over (from texttospeech.com or similar platforms), good
quality of voice recording of the instructor along with other tools such as webinars (where the
facial expression of the lecturer would be seen) can be tried. Additional studies can be carried
out on assessing potential strategies to complement for the lack of direct interaction with the
instructor.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research would not have been possible without the participation of the first-year
students from the BA (Hons) Advertising, Public Relations and Media and the BA (Hons)
Business Management programmes of the Middlesex University Mauritius. The researcher is
thankful for the active participation of these students both in the study and responding to the
online survey. A second vote of thank would go to SSRN for enabling the researcher to
consider further research from the initial study (Seereekissoon, 2018). Finally, the researcher
is grateful for the Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education offered by Middlesex
University Hendon. The postgraduate programme has enabled the researcher to reflect on
pedagogical methods that can improve own teaching practice.
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