Abstract:

Laboratory sessions are an essential part of the education of future engineers as it has been previously evidenced in literature. These sessions provide the students with an excellent opportunity to improve their understanding of the theoretical concepts and to value their utility. However, the interest of the students in these activities has been declining over the years. To reverse this situation, new approaches incorporating Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been introduced. One of the most popular is the development of tutorial videos describing the practical procedure of the sessions.

This technique has been normally used for basic courses in subjects such as physics or chemistry taught in the first years of the degree, but it has been rarely applied in more advanced ones. This work attempts to fill this gap, exploring the impact of these techniques on three advanced subjects: Fuel Technology and Combustion, Energy Saving and Efficiency and Use of Electrical Energy. These subjects correspond to the third course of two different degree programs (Energy Engineering and Energy Resources, Fuel and Explosives Engineering). The videos were available for the students before the laboratory sessions, together with a Wooclap, which is an interactive electronic platform used to create questionnaires. The use of videos and Wooclap allows flip-teaching and gamification. After the laboratory session, an exam regarding the session was carried out.

In two of the subjects, watching the video and answering the questionnaire in asynchronous way were mandatory for a part of the class group, while in the other subject (Fuel Technology and Combustion) was optional, in order to compare results. A comparison between students that obtained satisfactory results in the Wooclap questionnaires, and their laboratory exam marks was carried out. Furthermore, in order to assess the methodology, results between applying ICT laboratory sessions and previous years (following a traditional methodology) were analysed. Furthermore, the time spent in the laboratory sessions was registered and it was found out that the groups which answered the Wooclap questionnaires before the sessions were more efficient and needed less time.

Because of the positive results obtained in the present study, the videos will be available in a Youtube channel, so they can reach more students worldwide and help other universities.

Keywords:

Flipped classroom, gamification, technical subjects, laboratory sessions videos, practical engineering, Wooclap.