Abstract:

2020 forced teachers of all educational levels to drastically change their whole learning-teaching process, moving from 100% face to face learning to 100% virtual learning within days. Almost a year later, many institutions have implemented blended learning as the only option to continue teaching while the sanitary circumstances improve, because they consider that face to face teaching is quite important in order to help students developing competences.
This is a unique opportunity to rethink the learning-teaching process, and what are the best methodologies that apply to this blended learning scenario, that according to many has come to stay.

When thinking about a methodology change, one of the most important issues to consider is how big the group is. Small groups are easy to manage, but big groups represent a challenge: students’ needs vary widely based on their speed of learning and interests, it is difficult to personalize, and they require an extra effort when moving to an online system to maintain active learning and participation.

There is also another important factor to consider according to this last year's experience: flexibility. We are still under uncertain circumstances that require a combination of methodologies and ICTs that allow transitioning from face to face sessions to virtual sessions (synchronous or asynchronous) in a sudden due to sanitary circumstances.

Flipped Learning (FL henceforth) is a methodology based on a more active participation and engagement of students and teachers in the learning process. It proposes moving most of the teacher instruction outside the class, while the time in the class is used in student centred learning activities, although there are no particular activities prescribed (Lag & Saele, 2019). It can be applied to any group size, but in big groups active learning is the only way to engage students (Felder, 2010). FL is considered part of blended learning since it can involve student validation of self-study and communication between the teacher and students via ICTs before the session, with face to face teaching (Prieto & Giménez, 2020). This allows teachers to follow more individually the progress of the students, personalizing contents and rhythms (Baker 2000).

This work proposes analysing the results obtained after applying a flexible structure based in FL and a ICTs mix during a full semester in two different courses (a mandatory one in first year, and an elective one in the fourth year). The structure was designed to enhance students learning, allowing the teacher to apply it almost identically despite having very different student profiles, based on a blended learning planification that suffered several abrupt changes due to sanitary conditions. Besides, this flexible structure will allow teachers to change to a classroom course with a computerized learning process when the pandemic situation ends, in case blended learning becomes the "new normal".

Results will show the perception of the students about ICTs used, a comparison between the results obtained during the pandemic with previous years, and our reflection on the experience as teachers.

Keywords:

Blended learning, students engagement, active learning, ICT's in education.