Investigating the Flipped-classroom Approach on College Students’ Computational Thinking Skills

Abstract

The study aims to examine the effectiveness of flipped-classroom instruction on college students’ computational thinking skills (CTS). Participants were enrolled in the basic computer course from two classes at a university in central China. One class as an experimental group was chosen for the flipped-classroom instruction method (n=55); the other as a control group used the traditional lecture-based instruction method (n=54). The results show that learning through the flipped-classroom approach can significantly promote students’ levels of creativity, algorithmic thinking, cooperativity, and critical thinking, compared with the traditional lecture-based instruction approach. The findings of this research suggest that instructors should be encouraged to take the flipped-classroom instruction method to teach.