The ‘flipped classroom (FCR)’ is a teaching pedagogy where students are actively involved in the learning process. It reduces passivity, enables students to become active learners through reasoning and concept application and facilitates student interaction with their peers and instructors. This instructional approach enhances retention and decreases distraction by engaging students.ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to train the faculty of the medical college and school of nursing in developing FCRs as an innovative teaching and learning strategy, to facilitate them in conducting flipped sessions for their students and to explore the experiences of medical, nursing students along with faculty members regarding the FCR they had attended and conducted.SettingPrivate medical college.ParticipantsA total of 442 students from medical college and school of nursing and midwifery participated in the evaluation survey with a female to male ratio of 339:103. Students who attended the flipped class sessions were included in the study sample. Students who did not complete the forms were excluded from the study. Nine faculty members who attended the workshop, agreed to facilitate the FCR session were invited to participate in the focus group discussion.ResultsBoth medical and nursing students found FCR format stimulating. A significantly higher proportion of medical students (73%) found the FCR more engaging and interesting than a traditional lecture as compared with nursing students (59%) (p=0.009). Similarly, 73% of medical students believed the learning objectives of both the non-face-to-face and face-to-face sessions were shared with them as compared with the 62% of nursing students who believed the same (p=0.002). A significantly higher proportion of medical (76%) versus nursing (61%) students found the FCR format more useful for application of their theoretical knowledge into clinical practice (p=0.030).ConclusionStudents found the FCR more engaging and interesting in terms of applying theoretical knowledge into practice. Similarly, faculty found this strategy as effective but challenging in terms of involving and engaging students in the learning process. It is recommended to conduct more FCR sessions for an interactive and student-centred learning, but proper planning of the session and using variety of technological tools to engage learners is a key to success.

Background The spread of COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 compelled all the educational activities, including medical education to be shifted from face-to-face interaction to a virtual platform. This shift provided opportunities for exploring online assessment modalities. One such assessment method is an online open book exam which is a unique concept in medical education of Pakistan. Limited information is available in literature regarding open book exam for the basic science subjects. Hence, the objective of the study was to determine the quality of the open book exam administered as a pilot project to the first-year medical students. Methods It was a cross-sectional analytical study that included 99 students of first year MBBS. The students were administered an online unrestricted type of open book exam as a formative assessment. The exam consisted of 30 open-ended, short answer type questions. The scores of the exam were analyzed for psychometric quality. Results The mean score was 47.24 ± 15.30 SD %. The reliability of the exam was 0.79. The majority (66.6%) of items were found to be moderately difficult with their difficulty index ranging from 31 to 80%. The majority (86.6%) items were in the range of moderate to high discrimination. There were no questions with negative discrimination. Conclusions The exam was found to be reliable and can be implemented with training of faculty and students. Online open book exam provides a good format for remote and formative assessment of students with minimum proctoring during times of constraints such as COVID-19 pandemic.