Roles and research trends of flipped classrooms in nursing education: a review of academic publications from 2010 to 2017

ABSTRACT This study reviewed the published papers on the flipped classroom in nursing education from 2010 to 2017, and tabulated the collected data from various aspects: “before-class stage/ in-class stage/ after-class stage learning strategies,” “application domains,” “research issues,” “participants,” “research methods,” and “nationalities” based on a theoretical framework. It was found that basic level of flipped classroom mode was frequently used in nurse education; that is, guiding students to watch instructional videos before class, and conducted discussion or practicing in the class. On the other hand, several effective strategies, such as Mindtools and game-based learning, were seldom adopted; in addition, several important educational issues, such as learning behavior, were not investigated in flipped nursing education research. It was also found that most of the studies did not design after-class activities to engage students in organizing and applying what they had learned from multiple units in a project-based task. Accordingly, several suggestions for future studies are proposed.