Investigation of a Flipped Engineering Classroom Designed for Non-Engineers

Main Article Content

S. Chetcuti, B. Pafford, H. Thomas

Abstract

Flipping a classroom is an innovative teaching method in itself and extremely complex when the students are not engineering majors. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the development, implementation, and assessment of a flipped classroom for a thermal-fluids course for non-engineering majors. Problem solving is a critical, if not the main, objective of engineering education. However, extent of student contact in the classroom is constrained by credit hours. In a local survey, most students indicated that they would not complete not-for-grade problems on their own after class. For many of these students, graded homework assignments are the first and only experience they have in solving complex engineering problems prior to exams. By only receiving lectures and struggling to work homework problems individually, it is arguable that few of these students are able to progress beyond the lower tiers of Bloom’s taxonomy. Historical time survey data suggests that the students conduct little to no daily preparation when there are no graded requirements, and conversely show extremely large time spikes when out of class assignments are due or prior to in-class evaluations. Finally, in class lectures force an instructor to teach a certain amount of material in a limited timeframe irrespective of the rate at which each student can retain or comprehend that information regardless of the experience level of the student.

Article Details

How to Cite
S. Chetcuti, B. Pafford, H. Thomas. (2014). Investigation of a Flipped Engineering Classroom Designed for Non-Engineers. Journal of Online Engineering Education, 5(2). Retrieved from https://onlineengineeringeducation.com/index.php/joee/article/view/64
Section
Articles