Abstract
Improving Critical Thinking Skills Through Flipped
Classrooms
Norah Alodiby
Flipped classrooms are generally characterized by its course structure comprising in-class and
out-of-class activities. It uses classroom time for students to actively engage in interactive
learning activities. In other words, a flipped classroom means that students take responsibility for
their own learning process. In flipped classrooms, students have more time and opportunity to
engage in different activities (reading, writing, debating, etc.) which results in improving their
critical thinking skills in general.
The course that has been investigated in this study is “Great thinkers, Great ideas, Great
debates: Big ideas that shape and have shaped modern civilization”. Students could register
under one of the following course codes: LBCL 298 /SCOL 398. The class was conceived by
Prof. Calvin Kalman principal of the Science collage; at that time, and Eric Buzzetti and Jarrett
Carty, principal and vice-principal respectively, of the Liberal Arts College.
This study attempts to answer the following question: What are the changes that occurred to
students’ Critical Thinking skills throughout the course? The data collected includes open-ended
questions interviews with both students and TAs, class observations, student writing products.
After qualitatively coding the student interviews, the remaining data sources were analyzed.
These were then triangulated with the interviews and each other in order to corroborate the
themes that emerged, as well as to enrich or expand the results.