FLIPPED CLASSROOM TO SUPPORT BLENDED LEARNING TEACHING

This paper describes an experience designed to evaluate the Flipped classroom model. Its main objective is find out if applying this innovative strategy would make a difference in academic results of several groups of students belonging to the basic stage, at the Faculty of Engineering of the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California. This approach started since 2007 and has been used in different educational levels with wide acceptance, but also receiving criticism about its application. In order to evaluate its efficiency, several teachers were selected and given an online course to introduce them to the concept and application of the model. Finally, a comparative analysis of the data on assessments and level of satisfaction of both teachers and students is presented. This proposal interest is focused on whether the use of an innovative strategy, such as the case of the Flipped classroom, can make a significant difference in the use of the students with whom it is applied in comparison with those who do not use it? And since the benefits of the Flipped classroom are still not supported by a large number of researchers (Johnson, 2013), especially in our country, we have been given the task of gathering evidence to support such approach.

The Methodology used was the following: teachers were selected from the area of mathematics to which they were advised through online courses on the use of the Flipped Classroom Method. The teachers selected topics to their liking and especially those with educational videos and other technological tools as multimedia material to use with their students groups. The subject was discussed with the students and held some reverse class sessions. Then, in order to assess the strategy, assessments were made on learning, which implies students partial test scores and a survey for both teachers and students on the level of satisfaction to identify students' perceptions about the elements of the innovative strategy, which is presented in an online questionnaire. From the results obtained we can highlight that the Flipped classroom can respond many of the objectives of meaningful learning, according to Johnson and Renner (2012), since it promotes in the student his ability to think, reflect, judge, relate, organize, analyze critically or summarize which implies a greater degree of cognitive capacity.