Flipping university teaching: a flipped classroom experimentation in the Community of Inquiry framework

Abstract

In the context of an Erasmus+ research project on the educational technology, the study deals with the issue of teaching innovation at the university through the experimentation of a flipped classroom, assuming that this can enhance the dimensions of the theoretical framework of the Community of Inquiry (CoI). The results of the CoI Survey – administered to students at the end of the course – are analysed and, in a mixed-method perspective, they are also related to the metaphorical representations provided by students regarding their learning experience. Moreover, in a quasi-experimental design, the CoI results in the flipped course are compared with those obtained in a cycle of traditional lessons. The evidence does not allow to identify an advantage of the flipped model on the cognitive aspects, while it offers partial evidence in favour of traditional lectures about some factors of teacher presence, and in favour of flipped classroom on some aspects of social presence.

Keywords

• flipped classroom
• community of inquiry
• mixed methods
• quasi-experiment
• metaphors of education