Fostering Active Student Engagement in Flipped Classroom Teaching with Social Normative Feedback

Digital learning platforms have reshaped traditional education by enabling more flexible access to learning materials. Building on this foundation, the flipped classroom model facilitates independent knowledge acquisition while offering interactive support for knowledge application. However, students often struggle with timely completion of graded assignments and underutilize voluntary assignments, which impacts learning outcomes. This study examines the potential of social normative feedback in addressing these challenges. We conduct a randomized controlled trial (N = 140) in a Bachelor’s course, providing students with social normative feedback on correct assignment completion. Our findings indicate that the intervention reduced late submissions of graded assignments by 8.4 percentage points (18.5 %), which correlates with higher performance. However, the intervention did not yield significant effects on engagement with voluntary assignments, leaving room for future research. This study contributes to digital interventions in education, offering insights into how behavioral interventions can optimize student participation in flipped classrooms.