The effect of a flipped classroom where students work on exercises in randomly assigned groups during class time

Last registered on April 13, 2023

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
The effect of a flipped classroom where students work on exercises in randomly assigned groups during class time
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0011155
Initial registration date
April 04, 2023

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
April 13, 2023, 3:34 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Ritsumeikan University

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2023-04-10
End date
2023-07-31
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial is based on or builds upon one or more prior RCTs.
Abstract
In this study, we examine the impact of a flipped classroom against a traditional lecture class on learning outcomes of students of an introductory economics course offered in the Spring semester of 2023. The experiments of the flipped classroom is conducted in the two sections of the introductory economics course, where the students are randomly assigned to the two sections by the administration office of the economics department. In our flipped classroom, we let the students work on exercises to solve practice problems in randomly assigned groups during class.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Ichino, Yasukazu. 2023. "The effect of a flipped classroom where students work on exercises in randomly assigned groups during class time." AEA RCT Registry. April 13. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.11155-1.0
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Among the seven lessons of the introductory economics course, the flipped-classroom teaching style is applied to the 5th, 6th and 7th lessons of one section, and the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th lessons of the other section.
Intervention Start Date
2023-04-10
Intervention End Date
2023-07-17

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
the quiz scores and the final exam scores
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We conduct our experiment in the 2022 Spring semester in “Introduction to Economics,” a required course for freshmen in the Department of Economics. The experiment is conducted in two sections of the course, Section C and Section D, taught by the same instructor, where students are randomly assigned to these sections by the administration office of the economics department. In this course, fourteen lessons are divided into seven each. In Section C, the first seven lessons were for “introduction to microeconomics and macroeconomics” and the second seven lessons were for “introduction to social economics”, and the other way around in Section D. The experiment is conducted in the microeconomics-macroeconomics part of the course. To ensure equal learning opportunities for students, all students experience both the flipped classroom and standard classroom, and only the timing was different. More specifically, the flipped-classroom teaching style is applied to the 5th, 6th and 7th lessons in Section C, and the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th lessons in Section D.

The class meets every Monday. In the standard classroom, students are asked to read the assigned pages of the textbook and supplementary readings prior to class. During class, the instructor gives lecture in the classroom. After class, as homework assignments, students are required to submit their answers to the practice problems, and their questions about the lecture. A multiple-choice quiz is given one week after the class.
In the flipped classroom, students are asked to watch the video lectures prior to class. As a homework assignment, students are required to submit a question about the video lectures. During class, students work on practice problems in a group of six students. The instructor and three teaching assistants are walking around in the classroom or hopping around the breakout rooms to help students and to take questions from students. At the end of the class time, students take a multiple-choice quiz.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Staffs in the administration office of the economics department assign each freshmen students into four sections, A, B, C, and D, based on the information of students' college entrance methods so that in each section the share of the students with the same entrance methods are almost equal.
Randomization Unit
individual students
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
70 groups of students, with one group having six students.
Sample size: planned number of observations
420 students
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
35 groups of students in Section C are control groups (taught by the style of standard classroom) and 35 groups of students in Section D are treatment groups (taught by the style of the flipped classroom) for lessons 1, 2, 3, and 4.
35 groups of students in Section C are treatment groups (taught by the style of the flipped classroom) and 35 groups of students in Section D are control groups (taught by the style of standard classroom) for lessons 5, 6, and 7.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Ethics Review Committee for Research at Ritsumeikan University Involving Human Subjects
IRB Approval Date
2023-02-01
IRB Approval Number
kinugasa-hito-2021-112

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials