Enhancing Students’ Learning and Satisfaction in Biochemistry Courses: The Impact of Flipped Classroom and Teamwork

Introduction: Faculty members in basic science education face numerous challenges in designing educational content and evaluations. The flipped classroom is one of the student-centered educational strategies that has gained popularity in the last decade. The study aims to evaluate the effects of the flipped classroom via group work on learning and satisfaction of a biochemistry course. Methods: In this quasi-experimental study, 66 students of Laboratory and Nutrition participated in a flipped learning method of biochemistry combined with group teaching against traditional teaching methods during the academic year 2023-2024 at Gonabad University of Medical Sciences. The traditional group had already passed this course in the traditional way the previous year. The Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate (ADDIE) model was used to design the flipped classroom in a proper way so that all steps were synergistic. The recorded clips, along with the PowerPoints, were sent to the students in the Navid Learning Management System. Moreover, the flipped class was divided into sub-groups, allowing each group to choose a chapter or topic to teach in groups. At the end of the semester, a 13-item questionnaire was prepared, and the opinions of the students were collected and analyzed regarding the use of the flipped classroom method and team teaching. To compare the effectiveness of the method, the final test scores were compared with the traditional teaching group. The validity of the satisfaction questionnaire was checked by the Content Validity Index and expert opinions, and its reliability was calculated by Cronbach's alpha, resulting in 0.88. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and independent t-tests with SPSS version 26. Results: The results of the independent t-test showed that the mean scores of the biochemistry course in the flipped class group (17.51±1.73) were significantly higher than those in the traditional group (16.24±2.37) (t (58.6) =2.48, P=0.016), which showed the improvement of learning with the flipped method. Further, the results of the satisfaction questionnaire showed that students were highly satisfied with the implementation of the flipped class and teamwork. Conclusion: The results of the study showed that students’ performance and satisfaction improved in flipped classrooms. The flipped classroom allows students to personalize their learning based on individual efforts and needs. Further, this method develops a sense of responsibility for learning, as students and professors work together to achieve common goals, which increases student-teacher and student-student interactions. Moreover, with this management change in the class, teachers know students better and ensure effective evaluation. The class becomes more transparent, which results in higher learning efficiency and student satisfaction. Future research must identify complications and move toward the facilitation of implementing the flipped method in medical sciences universities.