Abstract:

One of the main causes of failure of Thermal Engineering students is related to problem-solving. Most of the lecturers consider this is because of the misunderstanding of the Principles of Thermodynamics, their practical application and also their competencies in mathematics. As often happens, when students achieve poor results the lecturers usually think this is not their responsibility. In general, when a student struggles with a new problem, the student tries to find similarities in relation to the problems those were already solved by the lecturer. So the applied teaching methodology has a fundamental role.

ikasTHERM is composed of 12 lecturers in Thermal Engineering from the University of the Basque Country. This research group uses active learning methodologies based on flipped learning using video tutorials developed by themselves and shared on YouTube channel. The students have to watch these videos by themselves. The understanding of the theory from those videos is evaluated by using Socrative, so the lecturers know the strengths and weaknesses of the students in relation to the lesson in order to decide which activity is the most appropriate. These activities are based on guided problem-solving methodology.

The survey carried out at the end of the course and the results of the exam show that the methodology encourages the students to analyze and understand what they are doing, instead of trying to remember how they solved a similar problem.

Keywords:

Guided Problem Solving, Flipped learning, thermal engineering.