Abstract:

Technical Drawing and Computer Aided Design competences are integrated within the Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial Design and Product Development Engineering at Jaume I University (UJI) in Castelló (Spain) through 3 one-semester courses: Technical Drawing and Graphics II (TDG II) during 1st year and Computer Aided Design I and II (CADI and CADII), in 2nd and 3rd year, respectively. The three subjects are focused on creating Engineering Technical Drawings according to Normative firstly through sketching (TDGII) and then with CAD applications starting with two-dimensional CAD applications (CAD I) to three-dimensional ones (CAD II).

TDGII, CADI and CADII courses include theoretical lessons and practical sessions, along with the development of a graphic project throughout the course. The three subjects have been traditionally coordinated in several aspects (creation of material to facilitate the student self- learning, the use of auto-evaluation or peer-evaluation, etc.). Teachers’ experience and students’ opinions raised up a main drawback in the theoretical classes since they were taught in standard lecture format, being unattractive for students. Going one step further in subjects’ coordination, the teachers created a group of innovation on education with the aim of starting to implement flipped classes in the theoretical sessions. While in traditional lecture format the focus is on the teacher, in flipped learning the focus is on the students. They must learn by their own previously to the presence class by means of different material and tasks prepared by the teacher. Then, in presence class, more active learning is carried out. They practise by doing different tasks and the real understanding of the concepts that were self-trained previously is put to the test.

During last year, the experience was carried out in TDG II in just one session, but with encouraging results, concluding that the experience should be implemented in more sessions. In the first semester of the present course, a similar experience has been carried out in CAD I. Half of the sessions before the first ongoing exam were flipped whereas the rest were taught in the traditional way. Students answered a survey to obtain their perception on the new methodology. Furthermore, the theoretical exam included questions worked on the flipped classes. Students answered a questionnaire about the experience and the comparison between the two methodologies ‘traditional lecture classes’ and ‘flipped classes’.

The results obtained show that students rate very similarly the attendance to traditional classes and the attendance to the flipped ones as for their utility for concepts understanding and for the exam preparation. However, when comparing both methodologies, they found slightly more useful the flipped classes than the traditional ones for the better understanding and they found them more entertaining. With reference to flipped classes, the material prepared for previous tasks (videos and questions) and the presence tasks were highly rated, and they found that previous effort is accurate.

Keywords:

Flipped classroom, CAD, theoretical classes.