Modeling collaborative learning, engagement, and academic performance in a medical flipped classroom: A quantitative simulation study

Abstract

This study examines a quantitative simulation framework to investigate the theoretical interrelations among collaborative learning, student engagement, and academic performance in a flipped classroom context in medical education. Despite extensive discourse about flipped pedagogy in higher education, few modeling studies have used a systematic measurement of collaboration and engagement together to determine outcomes of academic performance. To fill this gap, a parameter-based generation of a structured dataset that represented 200 medical students was carried out based on the assumptions of the parameters used in the previous literature on collaborative learning and engagement theory. Hypothesized associations were tested using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation analysis, and multiple regression modeling. The simulated results showed that there were positive correlations of strong magnitude existing among collaboration and engagement (r = 0.72), collaboration and academic performance (r = 0.65), and engagement and academic performance (r = 0.75). The results of multiple regression showed that the joint influence of collaboration (β = 0.25) and engagement (b = 0.39) explained 55 percent of the variance of modeled academic performance, with engagement being the better predictor. These patterns that are statistically coherent are associated with expectations of theory in the context of active learning. Although the theoretical underpinning of the study is based on simulated data and is not part of the empirical evidence, it does present a clear modeling framework that could inform future empirical validation in the context of flipped classroom practice in medical education.