Abstract:

In the course of 2017/18, a flipped classroom experience was carried out with the evaluation of the learning styles of the students. The flipped classroom is a pedagogical model that raises the need to transfer part of the teaching and learning process outside the classroom in order to use class time for the development of more complex cognitive processes that enhance a better and meaningful learning. The student can obtain information and learning without the presence of the teacher, working with the learning resources prepared before by the teacher. Then, the student get a first idea of the lesson contents before the classroom lecture, where the information can be shared between students and the teacher can consolidate the main concepts. A good design of the activities and learning resources is necessary, in order to achieve the specific levels of Bloom´s taxonomy on cognitive domain of learning in the different stages of the teaching-learning process. Pre-class activities as well as classroom and post-class activities were proposed during the experience along the semester. The learning styles of the students were assessed by a survey with 40 items. These learning styles are four according to the model of Honey and Mumford: Activist, Theorist, Pragmatist and Reflector. The activist style is inclined towards novelties in knowledge and the latest scientific discoveries, preferring activities of discovery and personal activity in learning. Reflector style likes to analyze a topic from several points of view to form a model about what is learned, intervening thought, inquiry and question in that process. The pragmatist style learns by putting ideas into practice and testing new theories and techniques, analyzing their usefulness, in a practical way and attached to reality. The theorist is a learning style in which rationality, objectivity and precision are sought, structuring the information in a synthetic and systematic way. The opinion about the experience was also asked to the students. Academic performance and the opinion of the students were evaluated according to their learning styles. Students with a more reflective style obtained better grades and improved in core competences, as they valued better the experience and the activities carried out, unlike students with a more active style. These results can help to design the teaching-learning activities in the flipped classroom, working with the strengths of learning styles of the students, but also enhancing the weaknesses of them.

Keywords:

Flipped classroom, learning style, core competences, engineering.