ENHANCING STUDENTS’ ENGAGEMENT AND THEIR EAP SKILLS IN HIGHER EDUCATION BY THE FLIPPED LEARNING APPROACH

In times of high demand on Higher Education institutions to tune their pedagogical approaches with the 21st century digitalized learning and enhance students’ skills, accordingly, flipped learning has emerged as an adequate answer to such demands. The article shows the results of a study on the effect of flipped learning, conducted with a sample (N=45) of international students enrolled on an online EAP course over two months, divided in two groups, one of them actively involved in flipped learning and the other – doing the online course as required by the university, but without the application of the approach. Initial, formative (mid-course) and final (summative or post-course) written assessment were conducted with both groups, to establish any changes in their critical reading / writing skills. The study has demonstrated that flipped learning could enhance students’ skills by shifting the emphasis onto higher – order thinking skills, based on the topmost levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, and could be extremely effective in Higher Education teaching /learning