Engaging Millennial Students through Flipped Classroom: Perspectives from Faculty, Undergraduate Medical and Nursing Students

Abstract

Background: The ‘flipped classroom’ is a teaching pedagogy where students are actively involved in the learning process. It reduces passivity, enables students to become active learners through reasoning and concept application, and facilitates student interaction with their peers and instructors. This instructional approach enhances retention and decreases distraction by engaging students.The purpose of this study was to train the faculty of the medical college and school of nursing in adapting flipped classrooms (FCR) as a strategy and to facilitate them in conducting sessions for their learners. Methods: This study was conducted from July 2019 to September 2020. Three training workshops were conducted for faculty participants. The workshop was designed in a flipped style format in which pre-reading material was shared in advance with the workshop participants. A discussion board was created on Pad-let to engage workshop participants prior to the face-to-face (F2F) session. Kahoot was used to assess prior knowledge at the beginning of the F2F session. A video on flipped classroom was uploaded along with a few questions in between to check their basic understanding of the topic. Workshops’ participants conducted sessions for medical and nursing students and participated in focus group discussions (FGD) to share their experiences. Students’ perspectives were also obtained after their FCR session through a structured questionnaire.Results: Both medical and nursing students found FCR format stimulating. A significantly higher proportion of medical students (73%) found the FCR more engaging and interesting than a traditional lecture as compared to nursing students (59%) (p= 0.009). Similarly, 73 % of medical students believed the learning objectives of both the non-face-to-face (NF2F) and face-to-face (F2F) sessions were shared with them as compared to the 62% of nursing students who believed the same (p=0.002). A significantly higher proportion of medical (76%) versus nursing (61%) students found the FCR format more useful for application of their theoretical knowledge into clinical practice (p=0.030).Conclusion: Students found the flipped classroom (FCR) more engaging and interesting in terms of applying theoretical knowledge into practice. It is recommended to conduct more FCR sessions for an interactive and student-centered learning experience.