In Tanzania, education is conceived as a strategic agent for mindset transformation and for the creation of a well-educated nation, sufficiently equipped with the knowledge needed to competently and competitively solve the development challenges facing the nation. Based on this conviction, the government adapted the Big Results Now Initiative (BRN) from the Malaysian government in 2013 so as to realize its educational goals. The Big Results Now Initiative was aimed at improving students’ academic performance by fast-tracking the quality of secondary school education. It focused on delivering defined goals at a predetermined timeline; that is, from 2013 to 2016. This paper provides an empirical overview on the implementation of Big Results Now initiative in Tanzania and its efficacy on students’ academic performance in secondary schools. Big Results Now readiness dimensions and rationale is first presented alongside the nexus between implementation and academic performance in secondary schools. The paper concludes that the implementation of Big Results Now Initiative in Tanzania has had some noticeable effects on the academic performance in secondary schools. However, a lot still need to be done in as far as bridging the existing discrepancy between implementation and quality academic performance. It is recommended that the implementation of important educational initiatives like BRN should follow a bottom-up approach- for a sense of ownership and for a desirable attention to detail. Furthermore, the government should not wholly depend on donors to finance the implementation of educational policies and/or initiative but rather engage the local citizenry.

The flipped classroom is an active learning strategy in which what normally is done at home is flipped or switched with what is done during the classroom time. The objective of this work was to use the flipped classroom for the students learning improvement in the Pharmaceutical Quantitative Analysis Laboratory at the Pharmacy Faculty of the Universidad de Costa Rica. For this purpose, students were divide in groups, and a laboratory practice with its respective support material was assigned to each one. This information was explained to each member of the group, as well as other aspects that were considered pertinent. At the end of the groups’ presentations, a survey was given for the evaluation of each student about this didactic strategy. In this experience, from the total enrolled population, 94.23% approved the course. As a complement, the students’ opinion revealed that for 86.54% of the didactic strategy improved their academic performance and/or learning process. This positive impact was due to the contents explanation by their peers, the learning deepening to teach the lesson in the best possible way, having the study material since the course beginning, and the acquisition of tools and/or skills necessary to make public presentations. Nevertheless, the most frequent negative comments were that there is no difference between this flipped classroom and traditional lectures. In addition, the complexity found for the class preparation was not well received.