2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In this paper, we examine the notion of the “surroundings” in an engineering classroom. We posed an open-ended reflection question to engineering undergraduates at a large US university about their classroom surroundings and its impact on their learning and comprehension. This reflection question was part of an NSF-funded study on the use of weekly reflection in a flipped fluid mechanics course to drive metacognitive development and lifelong learning skills. During class, students were encouraged to collaborate with their peers during problem solving to achieve collective understanding and interact with the instructor. Based on an inductive content analysis of the data from the reflection question related to the classroom surroundings, we obtained an unexpected result for the most frequently mentioned positive classroom “surroundings.” The predominant response of peers as positive “surroundings” (46% of responses) was unexpected, as we had expected mostly less-positive responses related to the physical surroundings, such as classroom layout, size, infrastructure, etc. Although students identified the classroom’s physical attributes and conditions as surroundings that had both negative and positive influences on their learning, a second unexpected result emerged with the notion of the instructor and in-person instruction as part of the positive “surroundings.” Upon searching the literature to understand these results, we adopted the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework. This model consists of the three interacting components of cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence, which enable educational experiences and learning. When combined, the Community of Inquiry elements identified in the reflections (i.e., peers, instructor, and in-class instruction) were discussed as positive classroom “surroundings” in 55% of the reflections. Thus, within their classroom ecosystem, students frequently identified their Community of Inquiry as a positive “surrounding.” This “balanced” the 54% of responses that discussed the physical room conditions as non-supportive surroundings. When the classroom’s Community of Inquiry was identified as a positive “surrounding” in the reflections, only 34% of these reflections also discussed non-supportive physical room conditions. When the Community of Inquiry was not identified by students as a positive “surrounding,” 79% of these reflections discussed non-supportive physical room conditions. Thus, the presence of a Community of Inquiry may have diminished the perception or impact of any non-supportive physical room conditions. Overall, our results suggest the positive influence that an interactive flipped classroom structure can have on students’ perceptions of their “surroundings.”