2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Due to COVID-19 contingency measures taken in Higher Education institutions, several problems in the teaching – learning process arose, being two of the most representative the memorizing procedures and concepts without developing true learning, and lack of engagement in online and asynchronous classes. Upon returning to face-to-face academic activities, we observed that these problems were transferred from the digital class model to the physical classroom. Therefore, it is necessary to develop content delivery alternatives that allow students to focus on learning and developing skills while interacting face to face within the teacher and their classmates.
Among the different teaching methodologies found in literature, flipped classroom allows students to be more responsible for their own learning and, at the same time, to generate an environment of collaboration and discussion in the classroom. These two characteristics allow greater interaction between students and teachers, resulting in better academic performance and an increase in argumentative skills of students.
This study assesses the impact of the flipped classroom methodology in two groups of the Static Equilibrium Analysis course, each group with an average of 20 students from the engineering school. The study was conducted for 10 weeks, split in two periods of 5 weeks each. The first group was exposed during the first period of 5 weeks to a class with no innovative elements, where the teacher conducted the class and demonstrated exercises in an expositive way exclusively, homework was then assigned and at the end of this period a partial evaluation was carried out. In the second period of 5 weeks, this first group was then exposed to the flipped classroom methodology, in which the teacher prepared a video of the topic to be discussed in the face-to-face session, and students reviewed and studied it at home. Later, during the fact to face session, students were asked to solve exercises in a collaborative manner with the supervision and support of the teacher. At the end of that 5-week period, a new partial evaluation was carried out to measure their academic performance. On the other hand, the second group worked with the flipped classroom methodology during the two 5-week periods, studying the video before each session and working collaboratively during the face-to-face sessions; carrying out partial evaluations at the end of each one of the periods. At the end of the 10 weeks of analysis, both groups presented an argumentative exam, with which the development of argumentative skills that students had throughout these periods was compared.
The results of this study show that flipped classroom has a significant impact on the development of argumentative skills. The students who worked during the two periods the flipped classroom methodology show a more developed skill that the students who were exposed to a single period of the methodology. However, when analyzing academic performance of both groups, the evaluations show that this methodology did not have a significant impact, but statistically equal grades were obtained by students of both groups. These results may imply that flipped classroom contributes to generate significant learning, allowing the students to truly understand the concepts underlying to Static Equilibrium, but not necessarily that is observed in practical and theoretical evaluations.