The review also found that positive learning experiences did not always translate into a preference for flipped teaching, and that benefits varied considerably across assessments, courses and measures. The review synthesised studies published between 2017 and 2024 that examined flipped or inverted teaching as a primary approach in higher education psychology courses. Most involved foundational subjects, including educational psychology, introductory psychology, general psychology and research methods.

Fifteen studies used quantitative designs, five used mixed methods and one was qualitative; 12 of the quantitative studies employed quasi-experimental comparisons. The research took place across 12 countries in Asia, Europe, North America and Oceania. Because designs, courses, samples and outcome measures varied substantially, the researchers used narrative synthesis rather than a statistical meta-analysis.

Frequencies in the findings therefore show how many studies reported a theme, not the size of an effect or the statistical strength of a finding. Flipped instruction moves initial exposure to course material before scheduled classes, commonly through videos, readings, guided preparation tasks and quizzes. Class time is then used for case analysis, discussion, collaborative problem-solving, instructor clarification and application of psychological concepts.

Post-class work can include reflection, online questions, review of feedback and optional revision. This design has a particular rationale in psychology, where students must learn theories and empirical findings while also developing scientific inquiry, critical thinking, communication, ethical awareness and the ability to apply psychological knowledge. A psychology student who merely recalls a concept has not necessarily demonstrated the disciplinary competence the course is intended to cultivate.

The reviewed designs generally aimed to move foundational preparation outside class and reserve live sessions for analysis, evaluation and application. Video-based learning was the dominant pre-class feature, appearing in 19 studies. Text materials were used in 14, quizzes in seven, online forums in four and structured self-reflection in two.

Only six studies reported post-class review or follow-up activities, compared with 15 that reported structured in-class activities and group discussion. Instructor-led instruction appeared in 11 studies, student presentations in eight, formative assessment in seven and technology-mediated interaction in six. Instructor teaching was therefore not eliminated; in many courses it was shortened into mini-lectures, question-and-answer sessions or guided clarification.

The reviewed evidence does not establish that connecting all three phases is more effective than other arrangements, but it does show that reporting was concentrated in the pre-class and in-class stages, with post-class consolidation described in a minority of studies. Students in the reviewed courses reported several advantages. Fourteen studies described positive affective responses, such as enjoyment, interest, satisfaction or motivation, while 11 reported benefits for engagement and interaction.

Six studies reported benefits for higher-order thinking, seven for learning flexibility and three each for self-efficacy and self-regulated learning. Students valued being able to pause, replay, slow down and revisit videos or readings. Classroom discussions also created opportunities to compare explanations with peers before receiving clarification from an instructor.

Question design was an especially revealing outcome in one mixed-methods study: as the course progressed, students increasingly created questions requiring application, analysis and evaluation rather than simple recall. Another study found stronger written applications in a flipped condition, although these differences did not amount to a general advantage across all assessments. Academic performance produced a more complicated picture.

Nine studies reported at least one favourable achievement result, but several found no overall course-grade or examination difference. One introductory psychology study detected group differences only by the third test, while another reported higher immediate quiz scores under flipped teaching but no long-term examination advantage. Research methods students showed a slight quiz advantage and spent more time studying outside class, yet their course evaluations were similar.

A large research methods cohort reported improved engagement and achievement, while an educational psychology study found that initial quiz differences disappeared later. Student experience also did not translate automatically into a preference for flipped teaching. In one study of 200 undergraduates, students preferred the traditional format overall, even though certain personality and mastery characteristics were associated with preference for flipped instruction.

Another study of 257 students found that traditional lectures were slightly preferred, while the flipped approach was perceived as more interesting but not more effective. These distinctions matter because satisfaction, perceived learning, examination performance and teaching preference are separate outcomes. A classroom can generate enjoyable discussion and stronger performance on a particular task without becoming students’ preferred learning environment.

The review also identified only three studies reporting self-efficacy gains and three addressing self-regulated learning, with evidence limited to particular activities such as critical judgment, reflection or organization of study materials rather than the full range of self-regulatory processes. Implementation barriers were widespread. Insufficient student preparation appeared in 11 studies, increased student workload in eight and student resistance in eight.

Some students skimmed readings, multitasked during videos or skipped preparatory tasks, limiting their ability to contribute to cases and discussions. The model also transferred responsibility for time management to learners, and some described the volume of preparatory work as tiring or excessive. Collaboration was not automatically effective: four studies reported uneven contributions, coordination difficulties or reliance on better-prepared classmates.

Technology constraints, including difficulties watching pre-class videos in shared accommodation, appeared in three studies. Teachers also had to redesign syllabuses, produce or select videos, plan active exercises, integrate digital systems and provide additional feedback. These demands can be substantial during initial implementation, even when students perceive the resulting course positively.

The review points to three priorities for stronger research. First, future studies should examine instructors’ pedagogical decisions, workload, beliefs and strategies for sustaining flipped courses, because the evidence base remains overwhelmingly centred on students and only one study included limited supplementary instructor perspectives. Second, researchers should test specific support mechanisms such as readiness quizzes, guided reflection, accountability practices and post-class consolidation rather than treating flipped learning as a single intervention.

Third, outcome measures should align more closely with psychology-specific goals, including psychological literacy, evidence evaluation, critical thinking and applied knowledge. The review’s limitations include publication and English-language bias, a small and heterogeneous evidence base, restricted database coverage and little attention to how teaching was enacted. Its practical conclusion is conditional: moving psychology content into videos is not enough.

Subject of Research: Effects, instructional practices and implementation challenges of flipped classroom instruction in higher education psychology courses

Article Title: Flipped learning in psychology education: a systematic review of instructional practices, benefits, implementation challenges, and future research directions

Article References: Tao, J., Mohamad Nizar, N. N., Kamaruddin, A. Y., Yang, P., Zhang, C., & Wang, W. (2026). Flipped learning in psychology education: a systematic review of instructional practices, benefits, implementation challenges, and future research directions. Frontiers in Education, 11, Article 1920474. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2026.1920474

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/feduc.2026.1920474

Keywords: flipped learning, psychology education, higher education, systematic review, student engagement, higher-order thinking, pre-class preparation, academic achievement, instructional design, learning workload, Flipped, learning

The intervention combined a flipped sequence with gamified in-class activities. For the flipped component, the teacher uploaded PowerPoint slides, videos and audio recordings to the class WhatsApp group before each session, covering the concepts addressed in class. During the subsequent online lesson, students played digital games on those concepts using Kahoot and LearningApps. Activity formats included quizzes, cloze tests, matching and pairing games, sentence ordering, millionaire-style questions, image matching, audio or video prompts, number-line exercises and group assignments. The content addressed grammar, vocabulary, discourse conventions, picture description, résumés and cover letters, parts of speech, tense, modal verbs, conditionals, dangling modifiers, parallelism, instructions and technical proposals. The course ran from July to December 2020, with 90-minute laboratory sessions on weekdays except Wednesday.

All 28 students enrolled in the Foundation English course experienced the intervention, but only 10 volunteered for end-of-semester interviews and provided the data analysed in the study. The interviewees included three women and seven men and had a mean age of 18. Placement in the course was determined by an institutional English proficiency test, producing a cohort described as relatively homogeneous in language proficiency. Researchers selected a qualitative case-study design because the question concerned students’ own accounts of emotion, motivation, confidence and preference rather than responses on predefined psychological scales. Each semi-structured, one-to-one interview lasted about 20 minutes, was audio-recorded with consent and was transcribed verbatim by the first author. Each transcript was checked against its recording before analysis.

The transcripts were analysed in NVivo 14 using a codebook-based thematic approach. The first author conducted the initial coding, consolidated related codes into 10 thematic nodes under the parent construct of the affective domain and refined the structure against the full corpus. Two co-authors who had not taught the cohort independently reviewed all 10 coded transcripts against the node definitions; discrepancies were resolved through discussion, and no formal intercoder agreement statistic was calculated. No new thematic nodes appeared after the eighth transcript, while the final two interviews confirmed and enriched existing themes. Word-frequency queries, co-occurrence analysis, coding summaries and sentiment coding were used as descriptive tools. The researchers explicitly treated these outputs as aids to interpretation rather than statistical evidence of theme importance.

Motivation appeared in all 10 transcripts and accounted for 17.9% of coded transcript text, while the engaging nature of the games also appeared in all 10 and covered 16.3%. Language suitability was coded in nine interviews and covered 14.7%. Students described persisting with difficult Kahoot questions rather than abandoning them, sometimes playing beyond scheduled class time and describing picture-description tasks as imaginative and interesting. They connected the activities with vocabulary, grammar, speaking and writing, although the study did not test the perceived skill improvements. The percentages describe the share of transcript text assigned to each node, not effects in the wider student population. They can overlap because an excerpt could receive more than one code; across the 10 nodes, total coverage was 110% by design.

Collaboration was another prominent feature. A preference for playing together appeared in eight transcripts, and social presence appeared in seven. Learners reported choosing group play for unfamiliar or difficult topics and individual play when they felt confident with the material. Group activities created opportunities to ask questions, share responses and learn from peers, while individual games allowed students to test their ability with less immediate social pressure. One participant explained that when a topic was familiar, they played alone, whereas otherwise they learned from others. Some students also said they could support classmates as well as learn from them. The pattern was interpreted through social constructivist and self-efficacy theories, but those frameworks informed the study’s analysis rather than functioning as experimentally tested mechanisms.

Students did not regard the two platforms as interchangeable. Coded references to Kahoot were more often associated with motivation and excitement, consistent with its competitive, timed quiz format. LearningApps was more frequently associated with social presence and language suitability because its varied templates supported activities such as matching pairs, cloze exercises and vocabulary games. These were descriptive tendencies rather than numerical platform ratings: participants did not comment equally on both services, and references were unevenly distributed across interviews. Overall, the accounts suggest complementarity, with Kahoot providing competitive energy and LearningApps supporting focused, skill-specific practice, but the study did not experimentally compare the platforms or establish that either produced better learning outcomes.

One of the clearest findings concerned the timing of instruction. Despite the flipped design, students often preferred to receive conceptual explanation during class before being allowed to play. Their comments suggested that materials shared through WhatsApp were not consistently prepared, either because students failed to complete the preparation or because some concepts were difficult to understand independently. Continuous gameplay also produced boredom for at least one participant. These observations qualify the assumption that placing explanatory materials before class automatically creates a successful flipped sequence. The study did not test alternative classroom sequences or evaluate readiness checks. Instead, it identified timing as a design issue: learners in this particular case generally wanted brief in-class conceptual input before gameplay, while uninterrupted play was not always engaging.

The findings also showed that positive and mixed responses coexisted. Learners reported that choice over when, how and with whom to play could support autonomy; feedback, rewards and graduated difficulty could reinforce perceived competence; and collaborative formats could foster relatedness. Accounts of persistence, absorption and rapid feedback resembled the flow experience described in the study’s theoretical framework, while peer support resembled social scaffolding. At the same time, enthusiasm was accompanied by boredom, inconsistent preparation, platform preferences and variation in prior experience with educational games. Six of the participants reported that they had not played classroom games before, making initial unfamiliarity part of the experience rather than evidence of a longer-term adaptation pattern.

The evidence base remains narrow and should not be read as proof that gamification improves learning or motivation. The study relied on retrospective self-reports from volunteer interviewees in one pandemic-era course, and the instructor’s dual role as teacher and interviewer could have encouraged socially desirable responses even though final grades had been submitted before interviews. Coding was performed by one researcher with co-author review rather than independent double-coding. No pre- and post-intervention proficiency tests, performance scores, classroom observations or platform analytics were used, and the games primarily targeted language knowledge rather than systematically assessing listening, speaking, reading and writing. Future work could triangulate interviews with observations, analytics and proficiency measures, follow learners beyond the novelty phase and include more diverse academic programmes. Within these limits, the case provides detailed qualitative evidence about how game design, collaboration, challenge and the timing of conceptual support shaped students’ reported motivation, confidence and sense of connection in an online English class.

Subject of Research: Perceived affective experiences of undergraduate learners in a gamified flipped online English course

Article Title: Gamified flipped learning and the affective domain of language learning: a qualitative case study of online English classes

Article References: Sivakami, B., Jayasudha, M., & Sanmuganathan, K. (2026). Gamified flipped learning and the affective domain of language learning: a qualitative case study of online English classes. Frontiers in Education, 11, Article 1888127. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2026.1888127

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/feduc.2026.1888127

Keywords: gamified learning, flipped classroom, online English, student motivation, social presence, qualitative case study, Kahoot, LearningApps, higher education, language learning, Gamified, flipped