Electronic flipped classroom on improving students' academic performance and motivation in the Context of the COVID-19

The outbreak of the disease in Wuhan, China, called Corona, caused a crisis in regional and global public health, which led to changes in most aspects of life. Due to social distancing and protection from the disease, the method of education changed; it also led to reducing the learning and academic performance of students. Students in higher education have also been severely affected by the virus due to travel restrictions and social distancing, isolation measures, quarantine, closure of university campuses and closure of borders, which also damaged students' academic motivation. Delaying admission to university was one of the biggest challenges. A review of research has shown during COVID-19 pandemic, the rate of learning and academic motivation declined, so there seemed to be a need for an educational solution to address this issue. The electronic flipped classroom in Corona conditions could be considered. Although research indicated a better effect of the flipped classroom on learners' performance, it is not still clear how the electronic flipped classroom would lead to better performance and more research is needed. Therefore, this study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of the electronic flipped classroom on students' academic performance and motivation.

The research method was quasi-experimental with pre-test and post-test design having experimental and control groups. From the educational students of Tehran University, 38 students were selected as the sample through convenience sampling method and were randomly divided into experimental and control groups. The research instruments were a researcher-made performance test and an academic motivation questionnaire (Walrand et al., 1989). The sessions were held for both groups for three months weekly (a total of 12 sessions). The findings were analyzed using SPSS software version 23 and covariance method. It is noteworthy that before using the covariance method, its assumption was tested using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and the Levene's test.

In this study, 38 students participated in two experimental and control groups, aged between 19 and 22 (M = 20.44, SD = 1.33), comparing the two groups with independent t-test (t = 0.651), showed that there was no significant difference between the mean age of the experimental group of 20.14 ± 0.70 and the control group of 20.68 ± 0.49. A total of 82% of the participants were girls. The results showed that the EFC had a significant effect on academic performance and academic motivation (P≤0.001), so that after the experimental intervention, the mean of the experimental group was higher than that of the control group in both variables.

The EFC affects students' academic performance and motivation. Therefore, use the EFC improves academic performance and motivation as well as the success of e-learning.