The effect of the virtual Flipped Classroom on the academic writing: self-perception of university students

The development of academic writing competence in higher education students has presented numerous difficulties during virtual education due to the scarce application of emerging methodologies. For this reason, the present research aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the virtual Flipped Classroom (FC) methodology in the development of academic writing skills from the student's perspective. The approach of the study is quantitative, with a quasi-experimental design (with pre- and post-test in two groups) and descriptive-inferential analysis. The "Self-perception of Academic Writing Skills" questionnaire was administered to 113 first-cycle university students from different disciplines (experimental group=57; control group=56) selected in an intentional non-probabilistic manner. The results show that the experimental group increased the high level of writing skills from 12.28% to 66.67% while the control group increased from 16.07% to 44.64%. These differences are significant and of medium magnitude (p < .05; Delta 2 > .50), as is the case with the dimensions of literature review, basic knowledge of scientific writing, importance of research, language skills and citation and referencing norms. Comparison with previous studies shows that the FC methodology is effective in improving academic writing in the university context.