Abstract:

Online learning has forced educators worldwide to migrate abruptly to the virtual world. Despite the abundance of options and tools available for educators to utilize for teaching and learning, many teachers found themselves imitating their in-class practices in online learning environments. Therefore, many teachers found themselves lecturing in online synchronous sessions hoping for positive outcomes. However, lecturing has been criticized for long for its ineffective and passivity which encouraged more educators to search for better and more effective options. Increasingly, flipped learning is becoming a well reputed teaching meta-strategy which enables educators to design more engaging and motivating online learning environments. Although flipped learning is often misunderstood as short instructional videos, it provides educators with frameworks to implement any preferable teaching strategy or method adding flexibility and effectiveness to education contexts. Therefore, the current research aimed at examining students' engagement in online learning environments depending on the content delivery mode used (instructional videos and an interactive social annotation platform (Perusall)). The study used a semi-experimental research design which was applied on two groups (60 students in the experimental group and 65 in the control group) who study Educational Computers subject at the Hashemite University in Jordan. Both groups were required to engage with the materials prior the class by watching the assigned videos and writing notes and questions about the content of the instructional videos for the first group. Students in the second group were required to read and interacting with the assigned text on Perusall. Students are engaged with the text and other students through annotations on the text. Students in both groups were expected to come to the live class with enough understanding of the learning materials which enable them to engage in online discussions. The results of the study showed that students in both groups were highly motivated to learn using flipped learning. However, students using instructional videos were more motivated to learn than students who used the annotation platform. This might be due to the familiarity of students with the video medium which required less efforts to adapt to the new teaching strategy.

Keywords:

Online learning, flipped learning, Perusall, Instructional videos.