Abstract:

The uncertain situation due to the Covid-19 health alert and the experience of lockdown, made teachers adapt their teaching to remote modality. This fact not only changed their teaching paradigm, but also became a challenge that stimulated the investigation and application of other types of teaching methodologies and tools taking advantage of the knowledge in new technologies acquired.

This experience encouraged teachers of Graphic Engineering to raise a new methodology for the current course known as Flipped Classroom. The Flipped Classroom is a form of blended learning in which teachers offer students learning contents, which should be already known when attending classes, reserving the classes for the resolution of doubts, debates, exercises or other learning activities. The interesting thing about this methodology is that it implies a dynamic and active teaching that encourages not only participation and collaborative learning, but also requires the reflection of students.

Graphic Engineering is a core subject of the first year in different Engineering degrees―Industrial, Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical, and Agrifood Engineering―. In recent years, teachers have observed with concern two main problems to deal with in the subject. The first problem is that not all students start this subject with the same level of prior knowledge. The second problem is that the attendance to the theoretical classes suffers a considerable reduction during the development of the course. During this course, the teachers decided to apply this methodology as a way of acting on these factors, reducing their influence on the students' academic performance.

The idea when applying the Flipped Classroom methodology is to give students research activities so that before attending classes, they must work on their own the contents of the next session. In this way, students attend class knowing the basic concepts and the teacher can spend less time passively transferring information and more time supporting the understanding of knowledge. However, Flipped Classroom methodology implies the prior preparation of the sessions to design the activities and resources that the students will need and use in their learning. Due to the complexity of planning these classes, the teachers selected certain sessions of the current course to plan and introduce this methodology in class.

Some of the advantages presented by the application of this methodology are motivation and commitment to the students who become an active agent of their learning. From the teaching point of view, this methodology allows teachers to know the diversity of the class and to assess the evolution of the group in a more precise way while students can pace their own knowledge at home, dedicating each one the time required. At the same time, teachers become a guide for students to develop tasks and to achieve defined objectives while theoretical attending classes become more entertaining.

For this purpose, teachers created interactive videos (with H5P tool in Moodle Platform) with explanations about graphic contents. Subsequently, some activities were developed in the classroom with the students promoting the discussion and the analysis of certain cases.

Finally, a questionnaire was prepared to assess the students’ opinions about the activities carried out with this methodology. The results of this questionnaire show the good acceptance by the students.

Keywords:

Flipped Classroom, Teaching, Graphic Engineering.