ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF FLIPPED CLASSROOM: STEM STUDENTS' PERCEPTION

An innovative teaching model, facilitated by recent advances in technology, is gaining popularity across college campuses, especially in college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This new model inverts or 'flips' the usual classroom paradigm, in that students learn initial course concepts outside of the classroom, while class time is reserved for more active learning. However, and despite all the advantages that this model could provide, there are still discussions to date of the model and its impact is more anecdotal than data driven. This study provides detail insight of the student’s perception; the advantages and disadvantages of learning by this model. Although this paper refers to a Flipped classroom model, the study focuses only in one aspect that is the use of videos for flipping the classroom. The investigation was based on the question: What do STEM student perceive about learning with a flipped classroom model? The sample was taken from different engineering courses: Physics and Material Balances with a total focus group of 150 students. The study was based on a qualitative approach (study case) and the instruments used for data collection were survey, videos, interviews and some photographs. The analysis was made by the instructors involved in this study courses (to make the codes and categories by observation) and also the Qualitative Data Analysis & Research Software (ATLAS-Ti) was used for the same purpose. To validate the results triangulation data was carried out, comparing information from the instruments. Some of the most important results shows that the main advantages for students (according to their perception) mainly are: flexibility to learn from the videos (77%), better comprehension of the content (73%), advantage because of previous knowledge to class (34%) and motivation for learning (29%). Among the disadvantages mentioned by the students are: technical problems (34%), this refers to internet, software, etc. Other students negative perceptions were the lack of feedback at the time and that they prefer short videos than longer ones.