Impact of evidence-based flipped or active-engagement non-flipped courses on student performance in introductory physics

TL;DR

This study evaluates the impact of evidence-based active engagement strategies in physics courses, showing they improve student performance on conceptual surveys compared to traditional lecture-based instruction.

Contribution

It provides large-scale comparative data demonstrating the effectiveness of active engagement methods in introductory physics courses across multiple instructors and course formats.

Findings

Students in active-engagement courses outperform lecture-based students on conceptual surveys.

No significant pretest differences between groups, indicating learning gains are due to instructional methods.

Active engagement correlates with better performance on final exams emphasizing problem solving.

Abstract

We describe the impact of physics education research-based pedagogical techniques in flipped and active-engagement non-flipped courses on student performance on validated conceptual surveys. We compare student performance in courses which make significant use of evidence-based active engagement (EBAE) strategies with courses that primarily use lecture-based (LB) instruction. All courses had large enrollment and often had 100-200 students. The analysis of data for validated conceptual surveys presented here includes data from large numbers of students from two-semester sequences of introductory algebra-based and calculus-based introductory physics courses. The conceptual surveys used to assess student learning in the first and second semester courses were the Force Concept Inventory and the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism, respectively. In the research discussed here, the performance of students in EBAE courses at a particular level is compared with LB courses in two situations: (I) the same instructor taught two courses, one of which was a flipped course involving EBAE methods and the other an LB course, while the homework, recitations and final exams were kept the same, (II) student performance in all of the EBAE courses taught by different instructors were averaged and compared with LB courses of the same type also averaged over different instructors. In all cases, we find that students in courses which make significant use of active-engagement strategies, on average, outperformed students in courses using primarily lecture-based instruction of the same type on conceptual surveys even though there was no statistically significant difference on the pretest before instruction. We also discuss correlation between the performance on the validated conceptual surveys and the final exam, which typically placed a heavy weight on quantitative problem solving.