Quasi-experimental Evidence Of The Effectiveness Of An Inverted Classroom

Presenter: Tiago Freire (International Business School Suzhou)

Keywords: Flipped Classroom; e-Learning

While there is a consensus regarding the benefits of moving from teacher centric to student centric teaching methods, there is no agreement on how to achieve this. One of the most popular methods is the inverted classroom, where lecturing is replaced with other learning activities which students usually engage in outside the classroom. The discussion on the effectiveness of this method continues, perhaps due to the lack of quantitative evidence.

We conducted an inverted classroom experiment in 4 of 13 lectures of a Quantitative Methods module at the International Business School Suzhou at XJTLU. In particular, we uploaded an interactive presentation in our Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) for students to go over before lecture, and use regular lecture time for extra practice exercises. Using as a control group a similar module covering the same material, we use two multiple choice questions on similar topics (confidence intervals and hypothesis testing), one taught using a traditional lecture and the other taught using an inverted classroom, in both module's final exam to estimate, in a triple difference approach, the benefits of an inverted classroom. We show that this teaching method increases the probability of selecting the right answer a statistically significantly 19 percentage points.

*This is a Teaching Development Fund project.