Abstract:

The Flipped Classroom (FC) methodology has become popular in recent years in practically all fields of education. One of the most acknowledged benefits of this method is its potential capacity of accommodating to a broad range of learning styles of different students. Numerous experiences have been published, revealing in general an improvement in students’ academic achievement and a positive perception towards the learning process when the FC method is implemented.

However, most of these studies also show that these favourable results are not categorical. The increase in academic success, for example, is usually only moderate on average, suggesting that not all students benefit from it. Similarly, in the surveys designed to collect the students’ opinion about this active learning method, a non-negligible number of learners tend to report preferring the traditional format to the FC approach. This suggests that flipping the classroom may not always be the right choice. After several years of experience in a variety of courses, our conjecture is that the timing and the contents of the course matter for the success of the FC methodology. In particular, its effectiveness is reduced in advanced courses which are delivered towards the end of the degree.

In this paper, we provide evidence in this regard by analysing the implementation of a partial FC course in Advanced Macroeconomics, which is delivered in the last quarter of the Economics degree at the Faculty of Economics and Business in the University of Barcelona. We have gathered data on the academic achievement of the students enrolled in the course and on their perception of both the FC and the traditional method. To that end, we prepared two surveys for the students (the first one in the middle of the course right after the FC methodology was implemented and the second one at the end of the course after changing the lectures using the traditional format). These data are analysed to obtain conclusions about the effectiveness of the FC approach in an advanced course of Economic Theory.

Keywords:

Flipped classroom, active learning.