Student comprehension of biochemistry in a flipped classroom format

Concept-heavy courses such as Biochemistry in life and physical science curricula are challenging for many college-aged students. It is easy for students to disengage in a lecture and not learn the subject matter while in class. To improve student learning and participation, we employed a flipped format for the first half of the course and compared learning outcomes and attitudes with the traditional lecture in the second half of the course. The experimental course was an upper-level biochemistry course taken primarily by juniors (49%), seniors (40%), and some graduate students (10%) at the college level. Our results indicate that lower-performing students academically benefited from the flipped format (twofold lower failure rate as compared to previous years), whereas, there was no change with higher performing students when comparing student grades from previous courses. Academic assessments were derived from exams, quizzes, in-class activity/participation, and out-of-class homework. Participation and overall satisfaction with the course was significantly much higher in the flipped format (88% of students) than in the traditional lecture (< 10%) for all students. In-class activities in both faculty preparation and execution were crucial to the success of the flipped format. Our conclusions are that the flipped pedagogy is better for the reinforcement of difficult concepts for struggling students (95% students in agreement) and merits higher participation than the traditional lecture. Two-way communication between instructor and students is encouraged and enhanced with in-class activities and case studies. Due to the success of this project and in agreement with ~ 75% of the students, the entire course will be flipped going forward.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40561-024-00356-z.