Enhancing student learning in online courses through flipped classroom and multi-stage assignment structure.

As the demand for online learning keeps growing in higher education, developing teaching pedagogies that are effective in online education is of importance. Teaching courses remotely involves challenges such as difficulties in retaining student attention and promoting collaborative in-class activities. These can adversely affect students' motivation for learning, comprehension of new concepts, and application of knowledge in realistic problems. In this study, the efficacy of flipped classroom pedagogy in online classes is investigated, with a focus on student engagement and learning outcomes. An undergraduate fluid mechanics course was reconstructed as an online flipped classroom; the student performance was compared to that of the previous in-person, nonflipped sections taught by the same instructor. The paper discusses three main design aspects in implementing an online flipped classroom: 1) syncing the material delivery paces with assignment deadlines, 2) multi-stage assignments on the same topic at incremental difficulty levels, and 3) web-friendly and well-defined deliverables for group problem-solving activities. In both sections offered as the flipped online classroom format in Fall 2021, remarkably high student participation was observed, with an average of 1.1 students absent out of 88 students throughout the semester. Furthermore, compared to the two previous in-person, non-flipped sections offered in Spring 2018 and Spring 2019, the online flipped classroom students earned a 3.5% higher average score on the same final exams. Overall, improvement in both student engagement and learning outcomes has been observed for the online flipped Fluid Mechanics course. Finally, the paper discusses the advantages, implementation strategies, and limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]