The experience of a flipped classroom in a mechanical engineering course on Machine Design: A pilot study

A main issue in higher education is actively engaging students in the formation of their ideas transforming teaching in a way of mediating learning. In this context, flipping the classroom is a challenging proposal suggesting the replacement of teacher led instruction with in-class activities for students that focus on higher-level knowledge processes. Aiming to take advantage of the flipped classroom in engaging students in Machine Design, we decided to flip part of the correspondent undergraduate course following specific design principles. In class students worked individually and in groups on several types of problems, participating also in a peer review activity. The pre-course content was consisted of existing material, videos, texts and appropriate URLs. This was delivered through a wiki on the wikispaces platform. Preliminary results of this pilot study provide evidence about the potential of the flipped classroom method for higher engineering education.

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