When is flipped classroom more effective and why it flops

Abstract

A specific form of blended learning model – the flipped classroom approach – is increasingly being adopted by many education institutes around the globe. Yet, many researchers and practitioners remain divided over whether flipped classroom is really an improvement over the traditional classroom. This paper is the first to synthesize all available meta-analytic information on the effectiveness of the flipped classroom approach on student cognitive outcomes, and provide the currently best available evidence on the optimum use of flipped classroom. Cognitive outcomes refer to the domain-specific knowledge (e.g., facts, concepts) of a subject. This paper also summarizes the key reasons why flipped classroom flops. Using a meta-synthesis approach to examine 19 flipped classroom meta-analytic studies on student cognitive outcomes, involving 1,126 empirical studies and more than 85,000 flipped and 90,000 non-flipped participants, this paper found positive significant effects, ranging from small to medium effect size with a median of 0.42, favouring the use of flipped classroom in achieving better student cognitive outcomes. Current evidence suggests flipped classroom is more effective when formative assessment (e.g., quizzes) are used. Flipped classroom appears to be equally effective among learners from different educational levels. However, findings concerning the possible moderating effect of flipped classroom implementation duration and across subject disciplines were inconclusive. This paper also identifies several key student- and instructor-related challenges factors that could lead to flipped classroom failure through a comprehensive meta-synthesis of 16 systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Practical suggestions for alleviating these challenges are discussed. Overall, the findings presented in this paper can provide useful recommendations to help practitioners design more optimal flipped classroom lessons.