Predictive power of regularity of pre-class activities in a flipped classroom

Flipped classroom (FC) is an active learning design requiring students to complete assigned pre-class learning activities in preparation for face-to-face sessions. Students’ timely, regular, and productive engagement with the pre-class activities is considered critical for the success of the overall FC design, as these activities serve to prepare students for effective participation in face-to-face sessions. However, there is limited empirical evidence on the strength of association between students’ regularity of engagement with the pre-class activities and their learning performance in a FC course. Hence, the current study uses learning trace data from three consecutive offerings of a FC course to examine students’ regularity of pre-class learning activities and its association with the students’ course performance. In particular, the study derives several indicators of regularity from the trace data, including indicators related to time management and those reflecting regularity in the pattern of engagement with pre-class learning activities. The association with course performance is examined by building predictive regression models with the defined indicators as features. To examine the relevance of incorporating the specificities of the instructional design in predictive models, we designed and compared two kinds of indicators: generic (i.e. course-design-agnostic) and course-design-specific indicators. The study identified several indicators of regularity of pre-class activities as significant predictors of course performance. It also demonstrated that predictive models with only generic indicators were able to explain only a small portion of the overall variability in the students’ course performance, and were significantly outperformed by models that incorporated course specific indicators. Finally, the study findings point to the importance of assisting students in regulating their use of learning resources during class preparation activities in a FC. Refereed/Peer-reviewed