Effects of Flipped Learning Approaches on Students’ Learning Performance in Software Engineering Education

Abstract

Software engineering education plays an important role in keeping students educated with software technologies, processes, and practices that are needed by industries. Nevertheless, the nature of software engineering learning activities in traditional classrooms is limited in scope and time, making it more difficult to achieve a proper balance between theory and practice and address industrial demands. This makes scant provision for assisting students in keeping their software engineering knowledge current. To support software engineering education, flipped learning is a suitable strategy. Prior studies have shown that students’ perceptions in flipped learning environments are better than those in traditional learning environments. Nevertheless, in flipped learning, students may not have sufficient ability to conduct learning out of class. Therefore, the flipped learning strategy should aim to meet the needs of students to ensure that they get the appropriate support or feedback during the learning process before the class. The aim of this study was to propose a flipped learning diagnosis approach to promote students’ learning out of class in the flipped classroom. To explore students’ learning performance in software engineering courses, three classes of students were invited to learn with three different learning approaches (traditional learning approach, flipped learning approach, and flipped learning diagnosis approach). The results showed that the students who learned with the flipped learning diagnosis approach outperformed those students who learned with the flipped learning approach or the traditional learning approach.