Investigating the effectiveness of the flipped classroom in an introductory programming course

Abstract

A flipped classroom is a teaching-learning environment in which students self-learn content by watching video lectures outside of the classroom and engage in learner-centered activities in the classroom with the guidance of an instructor. Earlier research into programming education has shown that students in the traditional classroom find introductory programming courses hard. This experimental study compared the effectiveness of a flipped classroom (experimental group, N=48) with a traditional classroom (control group, N=52) in two areas: 1. programming self-efficacy; and 2. academic performance. The results show that the students in the flipped classroom increased programming self-efficacy and achieved higher grades.