Abstract:

In relation to virtual teaching in higher education, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a great impact worldwide, both in developed countries and developing or underdeveloped countries. In Chile, confinement measures forced the closure of all higher education institutions since March 2020. Despite this, universities maintained their academic activities through online teaching, continuing with the education process, especially in subjects with great theoretical contents.

With scarce time for planning and preparation of the teaching activities, the institutions have had complications to maintain the quality of the teaching-learning process in this new modality, a tremendously relevant aspect worldwide. The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) allows distance education to be maintained, however, this is not the only factor involved. E-learning programs must also have an organizational and a pedagogical model to form an effective and quality system.

In this context, one of the most common criticisms of traditional teaching methods is their limited capacity to commit the student. Thus, based on previously established content, students must study and learn the matters. This knowledge is later applied to specific cases in which the student would verify their usefulness. Finally, the student must study both the theoretical knowledge and its applications, being passing an evaluation the main purpose. In short, it is a rigid structure in which the teacher establishes the content and its possible applications.

Unlike the structure of the traditional class discussed above, in the flipped classroom the material is prepared to be studied autonomously. Once this preliminary work is completed, the student obtains a basic knowledge which, with the teacher’s help, will be applied in the classroom. In this way, the class becomes based on the resolution of practical cases. Finally, the more the students expand their knowledge, the higher complexity of the applications are studied.

This paper presents methods and results about the implementation of the principles of flipped classroom in the field of non-face-to-face teaching. In particular, the experience has been applied to the computer laboratories of the “General Hydraulics” subject, taught in the 3rd year of Civil Engineering in Civil Works. The scope of the proposed flipped classroom covers both the specific subject matter of the subject as well as other transversal content such as software learning.

Initially, the flipped classroom methodology was thought to be implemented to the entire subject. However, such a large modification in the methodology of the subject could have made it difficult for students to reach the competences. Therefore, the main objective of this proposal was to take a first step towards the implementation of the flipped classroom in the subject of “General Hydraulics”, currently limited to computer labs.

Keywords:

Flipped classroom, pandemic, hydraulics, civil engineering.