Effectiveness of flipped classroom in pharmacy education – a meta-analysis

Abstract

Background Flipped classroom, blended with online and offline learning, was regarded as an effective learning approach in pharmacy education. This meta-analysis was to comprehensively compare the effectiveness of flipped classroom and traditional lecture-based approaches, attempting to generate a unified and firm conclusion of the effectiveness of flipped classroom in pharmacy education. Methods Data were collected from 7 databases, involving Cochrane Library, PubMed, Embase, ScienceDirect, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Chinese Biomedical Literature Service System (SinoMed). The studies were included if they included objective evaluation of students’ performance between groups of flipped classroom and traditional approaches. The standardized mean difference (SMD) with a corresponding 95% confidence interval (95% CI) was used as the outcomes for data pooling. Results A total of 22 studies (28 comparing groups) with 4379 participants were included in the meta-analysis. The risk of bias was relatively high. Results of the analysis revealed that flipped classroom presented significant advantages over traditional approaches in student performance improvement, with no evidence of publication bias. Through subgroup analysis, it showed better outcomes for flipped classrooms over traditional lectures for the other subgroups, including different performance, degree programs. Conclusions Current evidence reveals that the flipped classroom approach in pharmacy education yields a statistical improvement in student learning compared with traditional methods. In the future, instructors should introduce more online technology into classroom and construct an interactive learning environment.

Effects of flipped classroom teaching in anaesthesiology residents: a protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis

“…The flipped classroom moves the teaching of knowledge to the preclass and promotes active and self-directed learning from traditional passive approaches, which aim to improve analytical and integrated abilities, critical thinking skills and teamwork awareness in students. 2 Current evidence demonstrates that the flipped classroom has advantages, mainly including higher theoretical knowledge scores and skill scores, over traditional teaching methods in various disciplines, such as nursing, 3 radiology, 4 pharmacy, 5 neurophysiology, 6 emergency, 7 dermatology, 8 cardiology 9 and neurosurgery. 10 Recently, an increasing number of studies have proposed and investigated the efficacy of the flipped classroom teaching model in anaesthesiology education, which also needs to provide extensive internal and surgical knowledge.…”