The impact of learning styles on student performance in flipped pedagogy

Abstract

Flipped classroom is an emerging pedagogical model with potentials to support active engagement and improve student performance. This research empirically validate the impact of: 1) Flipped classroom on student performance; and 2) Preferred learning style on student performance in a flipped classroom. We designed an experiment to compare the performance of students in flipped classroom with traditional teaching method. This experiment involves a total of 35 students. The students were divided into two separate classes (01 and 1E) taught by the same professor with the same contents and assessment methods. Students in Class 01 are the ‘experiment group’ and were taught with flipped method, while students in Class 1E are the ‘control group’ and were taught with traditional method. Data was collected from three components of student assessment (Participation, Homework, and Exam) and questionnaire; we used the questionnaire to group students by their preferred learning styles. The key findings after data analysis include a) Students in flipped classroom achieved 7% higher ‘Participation Grade’ than their peers in traditional. b) Students in traditional classroom achieved 17% higher ‘Homework Grade’ and 6% higher ‘Exam Grade’ than their peers in flipped classroom. c) Logical Learners outperformed Visual Learners by 10% in flipped classroom. Further, we discussed the implications of these findings to practice. We expect this paper to be useful and informative to higher education instructors who adopt or plan to adopt flipped classroom in their courses.