Investigating Students’ Attitudes, Motives, Participation and Performance Regarding Out‑of‑Class Communication (OCC) in a Flipped Classroom

Abstract

In a flipped classroom, students engage in active learning during class time and have individual information‑transmission outside class time. University students need to complete the pre/post‑class activities to fully benefit from flipped classroom. It is important that teachers adopt practical methods including teacher‑student out‑of‑classroom communication (OCC) to help students manage their time effectively and stay on task. This research examines the practice of OOC in a flipped first‑year postgraduate Business Law course at an Australian university that comprises a large overseas student cohort. By means of a questionnaire, the researcher collected data about student perceptions of OCC, their motives for engaging in OCC, and the change of the motives in a flipped classroom. Student demographics, online participation, and academic performance data were exported from the university database. The student answers, participation, and performance were measured and compared with t‑tests. The preliminary results show that in a flipped classroom, students were more motivated to engage in OCC. Moreover, the short‑term online participation improved for the students who were communicated by the teacher outside classroom. However, an analysis of the data indicated no statistically significant difference in students’ academic performance. In the concluding sections of this paper, the limitations of this study are acknowledged, followed by several recommendations for future research.