Measuring the Increase in Students’ Comprehension in a Flipped Introductory Calculus Course

Abstract

Introductory Calculus is one of the foundational courses in any engineering curriculum. Many innovations have been introduced in the teaching of this course to enhanced students’ understanding of its material. One new innovation that is increasingly being adopted is the Flipped Classroom method. This paper reports on an experiment that measures the increase in comprehension of students who took an Introductory Calculus course taught using the Flipped Classroom method that was specially designed for a developing country setting. Results from the experiment shows that students who were taught using this Flipped Classroom method had better comprehension than students who were taught using the traditional classroom method. Specifically, students who were taught using the Flipped Classroom method had, on average, 17.45 points higher exam scores.