Does participation affect performance in a flipped online course?

Paper i proceeding, 2018

In this paper, the relationship between student participation and performance in an online flipped course in nuclear reactor modelling is analyzed. In this course set-up, students follow
pre-recorded (asynchronous) lectures on the internet before attending on-line (synchronous) sessions twice a week during a seven-week period. Two types of on-line sessions are organized:
tutorials and wrap-up sessions. Attendance at these sessions is not compulsory. The tutorials aim at helping the students solve home assignments (on which the students are assessed), whereas the wrap-up sessions are structured around active student participation in the form of discussions. A cross-correlation analysis between results on the home assignments and attendance at the
asynchronous pre-recorded lectures or the synchronous tutorials revealed no significant correlation. There is, however, a significant correlation between results on the home assignments
and participation in the synchronous wrap-up sessions. This suggests that the wrap-up sessions help students to develop higher order thinking skills. This study highlights the importance of in-class active learning in a flipp ven if in the present case the in-class activities were organized on-line.