A multilevel investigation of factors influencing university students’ behavioral engagement in flipped classrooms

Abstract

Students’ behavioral engagement is critical for flipped classroom success. Research on flipped and non-flipped classrooms has provided mixed findings regarding students’ behavioral engagement. Using the motivation-opportunity-ability perspective and self-determination theory, in this study, we aim to empirically test how student-level motivation (i.e., autonomous and controlled), student-level ability (i.e., perceived self-efficacy), and class-level opportunity (i.e., perceived teaching quality and perceived platform quality) influence students’ behavioral engagement in flipped classrooms. Data were collected with a survey completed by 1002 students in 30 classes with flipped classrooms at public and private universities and tested using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). The results revealed that autonomous motivation, controlled motivation, perceived self-efficacy, and perceived teaching quality were critical determinants of university students’ behavioral engagement in flipped classrooms. When perceived self-efficacy was high, the positive relationship between autonomous motivation and behavioral engagement became stronger. Moreover, when perceived platform quality was high, the positive relationship between autonomous motivation and behavioral engagement became stronger. In addition, when perceived platform quality was low, the negative relationship between controlled motivation and behavioral engagement became stronger. Follow-up interviews with the students emphasized five contradictions in flipped classrooms that hindered behavioral engagement—there was tension between types of learning, the videos were boring, not all students actually participated in the discussions, students lacked sufficient time for in-class activities, and teachers did not have good interaction skills. Implications of flipped classrooms are also discussed.