The Effect of Flipped Classroom on Students’ Engagement

This study investigated the effect of flipped classroom on computer science students’ engagement level among pre-university students. Computer science students were observed to be less engaged during the lecture of information system topic. Students fail to answer questions which need them to apply information system concepts into the real world situation. Hence, the flipped classroom approach is explored to solve the problem. With the increase in the usage of smart phones among students in higher learning institutions, cheaper prices of smart phones, mobile data plan and ready availability of instructional videos on the internet, the flipped classroom approach seems to be a perfect practice to be implemented. Therefore this research made use of the flipped classroom approach to gauge its efficacy on college students. Quasi experimental posttest only design was used in this research. Students were divided into two groups, namely a control group (didactic classroom) consisting of 41 students and an experimental group (flipped classroom) consisting of 43 students. These samples were chosen using purposive sampling. Students in the experimental group were required to watch a micro-lecture prior to coming to class and were involved in engaging activities in the classroom. After the intervention, both groups were measured in terms of their engagement level in class using a four-level Likert scale questionnaire which consisted of four engagement constructs namely behavioral, agentic, cognitive and emotional engagement constructs. Flipped classroom students’ behavioral mean was 3.04, agentic mean was 3.06, cognitive mean was 3.16 and emotional mean 3.42. Findings showed that from the questionnaire, it was clear that the students in the experimental group (flipped classroom) were highly engaged. However, there was not much difference in terms of student engagement in the flipped classroom when compared to the didactic classroom.