Does the sequence of flipped and lecture-based classes affect the academic achievement and satisfaction of medical students?

Abstract

In a flipped classroom, class’ lecture is delivered as a video to students before the class is held, and the actual time of the class is spent on problem solving and discussions. As there is a need for further clarification of the way of using this method, in this study, we assessed the effect of the sequence of flipped and lecture-based classes on medical students’ learning and satisfaction in Emergency Medicine theoretical course. For this purpose, 59 medical students participated in this quasi-experimental study who were divided into two flipped-first and lecture-first groups. Eight topics were selected to be taught. Firstly, students took a pre-test covering these topics’ objectives. Afterward, in the lecture-first group, 4 topics were taught through lecturing while the next 4 topics were taught through flipped classroom method. Then the teaching method was shifted for the flipped-first group. Finally, students’ answered the satisfaction survey and post-test questions. Indeed, not only the final score of the flipped-based topics in both groups was significantly higher than lecture-based ones (P-value = 0.022), but also the post-test score of all topics were significantly higher in the flipped-first group (P-value = 0.032). In addition, the satisfaction score for the flipped-based topics was higher than the lecture-based one (P-value = 0.011). As a conclusion, flipped classroom approach could increase medical students’ learning as well as their satisfaction and it is recommended that flipped classes be applied from the beginning of the course to be more effective.

Keywords

• Teaching Methods
• Learning
• Flipped Classroom
• Emergency Medicine
• Satisfaction