Application of the Flipped Classroom Approach in an Undergraduate Maternal–Newborn Nursing Course to Improve Clinical Reasoning

Application of knowledge is shown to improve student comprehension, but with dwindling hands-on clinical opportunities in nursing programs, active learning strategies need to be incorporated into classroom learning. Nursing faculty in an undergraduate nursing program transitioned from a lecture format to a flipped classroom format, thereby incorporating active learning. Quantitative and qualitative data on student performance were collected over three semesters. The Assessment Technologies Institute (ATI) maternal–newborn content mastery exam, used as the final examination for the course, was used to assess student academic performance. End-of-course student feedback was collected from the Campuslabs IDEA Student Rating of Instruction (SRI) evaluation to assess students’ perceptions of their ability to understand and apply knowledge, as well as perceptions of the flipped classroom format in general. The ATI exam scores for the course did not change significantly, but the SRI showed a statistically significant increase in the percentage of students who felt they gained a “deeper understanding” and could “apply the knowledge and skills.” Although students resisted the flipped classroom format change initially, subsequent cohorts came to accept the change. Implications for educators are that although student dissatisfaction increased initially, the inclusion of the flipped classroom format within a course improved students’ confidence in their ability to perform.