Flipped vs. Traditional: An Analysis of Teaching Techniques in Finance and Psychology

Recently there has been a surge of interest in technology-aided teaching strategies such as the flipped classroom. Given the growing interest in these techniques it is important to critically evaluate their effectiveness. Although most existing research on the flipped classroom suggests an advantage of the flipped approach over a more traditional lecture approach, most of this research has been conducted in ways that preclude definitive conclusions about the relative effectiveness of the flipped approach. We present the results of a study that addressed many of these methodological limitations and compared the effectiveness of the flipped approach to a traditional lecture approach across two semesters in courses from two different disciplines, Finance and Psychology. We found mixed support for the effectiveness of the flipped vs. the traditional approach. In particular, in the Psychology courses the flipped approach resulted in superior performance on quizzes administered immediately after exposure to the material, but resulted in similar performance on exams administered some time after initial exposure. In contrast, in the Finance courses the flipped approach resulted in similar performance on immediately-administered quizzes, but superior performance on later-administered exams.