A Quantitative Investigation of Student Performance in a Peer Assisted Flipped Classroom Model

Abstract

In the current educational scenario existing at the higher education institutions, where the academic schedules are packed with lot of student activities and other skill development training activities, the faculties are facing difficulties in completing the syllabus, which is the bare minimum requirement expected of them. This leads to faculty resorting to the traditional lecturing techniques even though the scope of implementing active and co-operative learning strategies in the today’s classroom scenario is higher. Many past studies have indicated that the traditional lecturing techniques do not help in the improvement of student performance and satisfaction. This article reports on a study which employed a peer assisted flipped classroom technique to improve the performance of students in an engineering course offered in the final year of B.E Civil engineering program. The flipped classroom strategy involved in this study consisted of 28 students watching recorded lectures along with their peer pairs before attending the regular class hours. The regular class time was split between completing a handout based on the recorded lecture, group discussion and doubt clearing by the course instructor. The statistical analysis on the pre-test and post-test scores of the students obtained before and after the implementation of the research technique revealed that there is a significant improvement in the performance of the students compared to the traditional teaching techniques. The research technique is found to have a positive effect on the performance of students based on the results concluded in the study. The research revealed that the peer assisted flipped classroom technique can be implemented as one of the active learning strategy to increase the performance level of students.