Flipped classroom for practical skills to enhance employability: A case study of business Chinese

This study reported on a flipped classroom approach used in a Business Chinese (BC) course in the UK. The research methods were 36 hours of classroom observation, two focused-group interviews (n = 6, 50 minutes each), triangulated with students’ feedback from National Student Survey (NSS). The class observation revealed that the Presentation-Practice-Production (P-P-P) model functioned well throughout the learning process: the presentation of new learning materials was digitalized in the form of PowerPoint in an official e-learning platform for students to preview before class. In-class hours were used for understanding, analyzing, evaluating, applying, and creating. Students analysed the positive and negative elements and applied the positive factors in practice. After class, students took their peers’ constructive feedback into consideration and created their own companies. The interview results illustrated that although students felt it was more work, they welcomed the flipped structure in that the mode of instruction was no longer a one-way flow of information, but in a variety of media: audio, video, websites, links, etc., and by setting up and running their own companies, students were no longer passive learners, instead they made full use of the available resources to become active agencies, responsible for their own companies. Students’ feedback from NSS showed students’ positive learning attitudes, as flipped classroom enriched their learning experience by practising business skills both in and out-of-class, and running their own companies inspired them to devote more effort to the learning process.