Evaluation of a Flipped Learning Model in a MOOC on History

Abstract

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which offer college-level open online courses to general public, have rapidly expanded in recent years. MOOCs are often composed of lecture videos and registrants can communicate with other registrants on its discussion forum, whereas some registrants hope to receive instruction by the instructor learn with others in a face-to-face setting. This study evaluated effects of a flipped learning (FL) for such registrants with the data of a practice that combines lecture-video-based MOOCs for prior learning and face-to-face learning sessions for group-based practicum; evaluated effects of the FL design on completion rate and historical reasoning adjusting for other effects of registrant backgrounds and online learning behaviors. Results show that there was no significant effect of the FL design on completion; there were larger effects by video watch time and the number of forum activity with some trend of the lower completion rate among the older and those with no college degree. On the other hand, there was a larger effect of the FL design on historical reasoning than the online behaviors, and effects of age and education were limited.