Abstract:

In recent decades, technology has become a valuable part of the educational process. The spread of internet use, with computers and mobile devices becoming more and more powerful, has created new digital experiences that change students’ daily lives and learning habits. During the 2019-2020 academic year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this technology and digital experience became key pieces of the educational process. Now, back to the traditional face-to-face model, it is time to think about new educational methods that allow us to integrate technology and digital experiences in improving the quality of university teaching. Two educational methods that have gained relevance in the last decade are the flipped classroom (FC) and project-based learning (PBL). Both educational methods are student-centered and encourage students to cultivate time management, teamwork, critical thinking, and communication and project management skills. The combination of these methods is particularly suitable since the individual preparation work proposed by the FC is complemented by the collaborative work of the PBL. In this paper, we evaluated the implementation of both methods, FC and PBL, in "Bioinformatics" course of the Degree in Biology at the Universidad de Jaén. Those methods were applied to the seminar sessions of the course with the aim that students were more involved and had a greater motivation. Here, we evaluated the influence of these new teaching methodologies on academic success and students' perception of it. The comparison between the previous knowledge of the students and the final knowledge using questionnaires showed that the students improved in all the questions asked, although this improvement also occurred in students of a year prior to the application of the FC and PBL. Additionally, there was a decrease in the number of students dropping out of the course compared to three previous years and a trend of increasing the average grade of students completing the course. Finally, questionnaires were conducted to analyze students' perception of the combination of these educational methods. Among the students who answered the questionnaires, the acceptance of this new combined methodology was the majority, finding an average response value of 4.24 that corresponds to the answer "Agree". In this way, the students found that the FC and PBL methods improved their learning effectiveness, learning motivation, and learning interest, and also improved their diverse development and teamwork. Finally, we discuss whether the continuation of the combined FC and PBL methods in this subject would help maintain these trends in the number of dropouts and grades.

Keywords:

Flipped classroom, project-based learning, Bioinformatics, Biology degree.