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CPS1883 Christina A. et al.
4. Discussion and Conclusions
Since this is an elective course, every year approximately twelve students
participate in the course. This means that the sample is much too small to
evaluate the results with standard statistical methods. In the written evaluation
of the course, some of the students mentioned that it is more difficult to learn
independently about their topic during the out-of-class activities, than it
would have been to listen to a conventional lecture about the same topic.
However, the students also mentioned that even if they experienced their
working load to be higher than in a traditionally face-to-face taught course,
they in the end felt more comfortable and confident in the use of the statistical
methods than after completing similar traditionally taught courses. A few
students commented in the evaluation that, according to them, it was
appropriate to flip the classroom in an advanced course, since they already
had basic knowledge about statistics. The students meant that it would have
been more difficult in a beginner’s course due to lack of basic knowledge
concerning the subject.
The course lecturers, who previous years also have taught the same course
in a traditional way, noticed that the students, in general, appeared well
prepared to the in-class activities. During the web conferences, the students
discussed with each other and posed several questions to the presentations of
the different multivariate methods and their applications, i.e. an increased level
of student interaction was observed, compared to the traditionally taught
courses previous years.
We conclude that the sample of students is too small to perform a strict
quantitative evaluation of this teaching approach, but that the qualitative
results from the course evaluation and the positive observations of student
interactions in the web conferences, encourage us to continue the
implementation of the flipped classroom in advanced statistics courses, taught
in an online setting.

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