Meeting 25/05/21: Blended learning, Flipped Learning, and Student engagement

Hello PEGasus team! We had our last meeting of 2020/2021 today and what a nice way to wrap up the term.

Today we discussed Fisher et al (2018)’s paper on the relationship between blended learning, flipped learning, and student engagement.

Fisher et al (2018) present student engagement as a multidimensional and multifaceted construct influenced by the interplay of a complex array of factors, and a cornerstone construct for delivering quality higher education. Research they share has also shown student engagement to be related to academic success, to favour educational outcomes and student satisfaction.

As flipped and blended learning pedagogies have been increasingly adopted by higher education institutions, they quantitatively analysed whether the combination of flipped and blended learning could positively influence student engagement, performance, and satisfaction. They tested the following hypothesis:

• H1. Student perceptions of the benefits of blended learning activities positively influence their engagement with flipped learning (EFL).
• H2. Student perceptions of the benefits of blended learning positively influence perceptions of their performance.
• H3. Student perceptions of their EFL positively influence perceptions of their performance.
• H4. Students’ perceptions of their performance positively influence their overall satisfaction (OSAT).
• H5. Student perceptions of their EFL positively influence their OSAT with flipped and blended classes.
• H6. Student perceptions of the benefits of blended learning positively influence their OSAT with flipped and blended classes.

Statistical results demonstrated that blended and flipped learning do contribute to student perceptions of engagement, performance, and satisfaction, and that being engaged with flipped learning contributes to feelings of learning satisfaction even without perceptions of actual improved performance.

A lot was measured in this paper and it generated an interesting model (see path model results). Its method and results also generated a lot of discussion regarding the definitions and use of blended and flipped learning, the impact of the target course learning model, students previous learning experiences, course content presentation and instructions, and tutor interactions and feedback as these can all play a role on students perceptions of engagement, performance, and satisfaction.

References

Fisher, R., Perényi, Á. and Birdthistle, N. (2018) ‘The positive relationship between flipped and blended learning and student engagement, performance and satisfaction’, Active Learning in Higher Education, 1-17. doi: 10.1177/1469787418801702.