Flipping the Classroom Experience: A Comparison of Online Learning to Traditional Lecture

Abstract

Introduction and Review of Literature. Physical therapist education programs are challenged to provide physical therapist students with exposure to an expanding amount of content with little change in time to degree completion. There is a need for evidence to support creative teaching methods to cover basic content and therefore effectively use class time in order to facilitate higher-level thinking. Online learning has become more popular over the past several years and may be an effective means to achieve this goal. The purpose of this study was to compare outcomes of physical therapist students who were exposed to the flipping teaching method versus traditional classroom lecture in a musculoskeletal clinical science course. Subjects and Methods. Fifty-three physical therapist students participated in this study in 2010 and 2011. The 2010 cohort (n = 23) was exposed to traditional in-class lecture and the 2011 cohort (n = 30) was exposed to a flipped classroom in which the content was covered via online lectures. Student outcomes were assessed by scores on written exam questions in the following categories: total score, examination/evaluation score, intervention score, lower-level thinking score, and higher-level thinking score. An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was performed to compare the 2 teaching methods. Results. There was no significant difference between teaching methods in any category of student outcomes. Discussion and Conclusion. These results suggest that the hybrid model of instruction via use of online lectures produces similar student outcomes compared to the use of traditional lecture. This will allow physical therapist educators to utilize class time more efficiently and challenge the student to think at a higher level.