Abstract:

In this work, students formed small working groups to create a series of multimedia files. These files, designed to explain basic concepts in the annual course "Engineering of Biochemical Reactions. Bioreactors," for Third Year Biotechnology students, were shared as study and learning materials. The best of these multimedia explanations were made available to all students in the Virtual Classroom, enabling autonomous review and knowledge checks through peer explanations. This work marked the first application of the flipped classroom model for this subject and reinforced collaborative group learning, synthesis skills, and oral communication abilities.

The project followed the proposed Working Plan precisely, completing all planned tasks and achieving the initially established objectives.

The course "Engineering of Biochemical Reactions. Bioreactors" is annual, divided into two distinct parts corresponding to the first and second quarters. In each part, the following tasks were carried out as per the project plan:
- Propose a series of questions on basic concepts
- Assign a question to each working group of students, who developed answers through multimedia "pills" with a maximum duration of 5 minutes
- Review the work for grading and share the best ones in the Virtual Classroom

The multimedia files were generally well-graded, with an average score of 7.81 for the first part of the course and 8.2 for the second part. Additionally, the final grades of students in the May exam session showed significant improvement compared to the previous year, before the project implementation. The failure rate dropped from 19.51% to 2.08%, and the percentage of students with outstanding grades increased from 21.95% to 29.17%. These results suggest that the Innovation Project positively impacted teaching and student learning.

To propose similar projects in this or other related subjects, one area for improvement is encouraging students to utilize the Multimedia Gallery and view the shared files. While the quality of group work was generally good, only about 20% of students accessed the Virtual Classroom to view their peers' work. Consequently, learning often remained confined within each group, and the potential for autonomous learning through peer file visualization was not fully realized.

Keywords:

Education, technology, flipped classroom, multimedia.