Turning the Classroom Upside Down: Experimenting with the Flipped Classroom in American Government

With the concept of the flipped classroom taking the teaching world by storm, research into its effectiveness, particularly in higher education, has been lacking. This research aims to rectify this by detailing the results of an experiment comparing student success in American Federal Government in a flipped classroom, a traditional, lecture-based classroom, and an online class. The findings suggest that the flipped methodology improves student perceptions about and attitudes regarding the class, both of which can be important in stimulating student learning. While all groups demonstrated a significant increase in performance over the semester, student grades were higher in both the traditional and flipped classes as compared to the online section.