2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Flipped classes are relatively common in engineering education. In a flipped class, the lecture content is typically delivered asynchronously before class via videos, and the in-class activities are redesigned to be more active. In this paper, we will be discussing the flipping of a required sophomore level engineering mechanics course, Mechanical Engineering 220 – Fundamentals of Mechanics (ME220), at ________, and in particular, its effect on student performance and their attitudes towards flipped courses. Evert student at _______is required to take this course regardless of their major. In the Fall of 2022 there were 18 sections of this course with four of the sections taught by three different instructors using a flipped structure. In general, there was no statistical difference in student performance on commonly graded exams between the flipped and non-flipped sections except in a few instances discussed in this paper. In regard to students’ attitudes towards flipping, we looked at the effect of the instructor as well as the effect of various other factors such as major, GPA, gender, and activities outside of class, such as participation in intercollegiate athletics. We learned that students’ preference for a flipped structure over a traditional structure was strongly dependent on the instructor. Students taught by the instructor who developed the flipped course and who had a lot more teaching experience than the other two instructors indicated that they preferred the flipped structure (46%) to a traditional one (30%). For one of the other instructors, the students indicated that they strongly preferred a traditional structure (65%) over a flipped structure (13%) even though the videos were identical and the class structure was very similar to the first instructor’s class. The third instructor’s students also preferred the traditional structure, but not so dramatically. For the instructor whose students preferred the flipped structure, we learned that STEM majors tended to prefer the flipped structure more than non-STEM majors, and students involved in extracurricular activities also tended to prefer the flipped structure. Gender did not affect students’ preference for the flipped structure, and finally, students who anticipated getting an A or B in the class tended to prefer the flipped structure.