Understanding undergraduates’ adoption of flipped learning: Integrating UTAUT and social presence

Abstract

The adoption of modern instructional techniques, such as the flipped learning, are relied upon to improve students’ performance in higher education. Despite many clear advantages and positive aspects of flipped learning, user adoption is still slow or in its early phases in many developing countries. Furthermore, very little is known about undergraduates’ perception and behavior toward acceptance and use of the flipped learning method. Therefore, this study explores the relationships between five key factors from a social presence-integrated UTAUT model and students’ adoption of flipped learning. Structural equation modeling was employed to examine the data of 416 Chinese college freshmen. The results show that facilitating conditions, social presence, and effort expectancy are a significant positive influence on students’ adoption. Moreover, facilitating conditions and social influence positively influence students’ adoption, mediating by social presence. This study indicates that higher education institutions may achieve an increase in students’ adoption of the flipped learning method by emphasizing the attributes explored in our research model.