This paper evaluates the impact of a teaching methodology aimed at enhancing student learning and self-assessment skills in a large-class flipped learning environment involving a cohort of First Year students in Economics. In Flipped Classroom approaches students and teachers make use of contact time to conduct interactive activities aimed at practicing, discussing, and consolidating the mastery of material previously acquired, mainly outside the classroom, and through computer-based asynchronous individual learning. There is controversy on the definition of what characterises a Flipped Classroom environment, ranging from the identification of activities conducted inside and outside the classroom to the modes of delivery (Bishop and Verleger, 2013). In flipped learning spaces active learning is promoted as fundamental catalyst for success, largely taking the form of problem-based learning, cooperative learning, and collaborative learning. In this context Peer-instruction seems emerging as one of the dominant pedagogies nowadays. Further to Mazur’s (1997) seminal contribution on the role of Peer-instruction in learning, this teaching technique has been widely applied and researched, with particular reference to Physics education (Henderson and Dancy, 2009) and other STEM subjects (Perez et al., 2010). Often aided by the use of interactive technologies, such as Student Response Systems (SRS), Peer-instruction facilitates the creation of an engaging environment for students, and also offers the opportunity to gather useful data to evaluate teaching effectiveness, student opinions, and student learning (Cossgrove and Curran, 2008). Engaging with this literature, our research develops an appraisal of a Flipped Classroom pedagogy devised for the Introductory Economics module at the University of East Anglia, with the aim of evaluating the effectiveness of its SRS-aided Peer-instruction practices.  The pedagogy analysed in this paper is based on an algorithm that alternates formative assessment questions, self-assessment questions, and Peer-instruction moments, in a sequence of learning cycles iterated over the duration of each Flipped Classroom session. Thus, using data collected in multiple Flipped Classroom sessions, we develop an analytic framework to investigate four distinct features of the learning process, comprising: (i) students’ ability to self-assess their performance, (ii) the association between learning gains generated by Peer-instruction and student self-assessment statements, (iii) the correlation between learning gains and student attainment, and (iv) students’ perceptions of their learning experience. Blending self-assessment practices with the activities performed during Peer-instruction constitutes the most innovative contribution of our pedagogical design, which, in turn, offers novel insights to educational research on active learning teaching techniques. From a pedagogical perspective, we envisage that enriching collaborative learning with reflective practice displays great potential in stimulating engagement since students self-assess their performance while they are on-task, and are enabled to make better informed use of Peer-instruction time. We also argue (Aricò et al., 2014) that this approach facilitates the development of Academic Self-efficacy beliefs (Bandura, 1977 and 1997, Pajares, 1996, and Chemers et al., 2001), student Self-regulation behaviours (Zimmerman, 2002), as well as Student Motivation (McMillan and Hearn, 2008). Aside from developing an appraisal of the relationship between self-assessment and Peer-instruction, our investigation also addresses the role of Peer-instruction in ‘levelling the playfield’ in the classroom. By comparing the proportion of correct responses to formative assessment questions before and after Peer-instruction, we find that learning gains are significantly higher (after Peer-instruction) when student initial attainment is lower (before Peer-instruction). Finally, our analysis also considers student perceptions of Peer-instruction sessions. We demonstrate that while students are initially resistant to the idea of learning from their peers, they change their opinion as they are exposed to Peer-instruction.

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