Metaphors of Community of Inquiry in Flipped Learning: Mixed method Exploration to Unveil Student Perspectives and Navigate Innovation in Higher Education

Over the past decade, the exponential growth in the production and dissemination of technological media has resulted in a significant change in their use, transitioning from serving merely as a medium for all levels of educational activities to functioning as immersive virtual environments (Rivoltella, 2019; De Simone & Annarumma, 2018). However, caution is warranted in assuming a direct and automatic link between the introduction of technological tools and educational innovation. True innovation requires not only the incorporation of new tools but also a meticulous evaluation of appropriateness for specific targets, their suitability for the intended educational purposes and their integration into new and appropriate projects and training paths. Against the backdrop of this complex phase of technological and digital shift, this contribution presents the latest outcomes of a multi-year university teaching experimentation based on the methodological framework of flipped learning (Bevilacqua, 2018) and flipped classroom (Bergman & Sams, 2012), with a focus on the mastery learning pioneered by Benjamin Bloom (1973). Embracing the epistemological paradigm of the Community of Inquiry (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2001), our research adopts a mixed-method approach to obtain, from the students participating in the experimentation in the past year, a comprehensive feedback about their learning experience. Building on prior investigations (Coco, Pillera & Strongoli, 2022; Pillera & Strongoli, 2022), the quantitative results of the Community of Inquiry (COI) Instrument (Arbaugh et al., 2018) – divided into the three dimensions of teacher presence, social presence, and cognitive presence – are scrutinized alongside responses to three open-ended questions. These questions, administered simultaneously to the COI Instrument to the same sample of students, were designed to be linked to the three aforementioned dimensions of the COI, prompting students to represent, in a metaphorical form, how they had perceived the teacher’s role, the relationships with peers, and the learning process within the flipped classroom experience. To enhance the richness of our analysis, we employ a coding process inspired by previous studies on educational metaphors (Strongoli, 2017). This approach, refined over the past year, aims to extract nuanced insights from the complex metaphorical images created by students. By intertwining qualitative and quantitative data, our study seeks a holistic understanding of students’ perspectives on university teaching innovation through the flipped learning model. This integration contributes to a more comprehensive exploration of the educational landscape, shedding light on the intricate interplay between technological advancements, teaching methodologies, and student experiences.