PILOT EXPERIENCE FOR THE APPLICATION OF THE FLIPPED CLASSROOM IN SUBJECTS OF THE FIELD OF THERMAL ENGINEERING

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) stands for important changes in the teaching-learning model in the university context, specifically requires a deep revision of the roles of teachers and students. In this sense, the so-called flipped classroom model (FCM) presents many advantages compared to the traditional model of classes focused on the transfer of information from teacher to student: it allows to implement some active methodologies that otherwise would not possible due to time constraints, ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) are naturally integrated into the learning process, the student plays a leading role in classroom sessions, increasing his degree of motivation and satisfaction and certain transverse competencies can be implemented and evaluated in the classroom. The present paper gathers the preliminary results in the subject of Technical Thermodynamics of second course of the Degree in Industrial Technologies Engineering during the first semester of the 2016-2017 academic course within a teaching innovation project with the objective of improving the exploitation of the attendance classes. To this end, different types of methodologies and resources have been selected or developed for in-class and home activities. On the one hand, a combination of lecturer's notes, educational videos and training questionnaires was implemented in the Moodle platform of the University of Zaragoza (UZ, Spain) for home preparation of the subject. On the other hand, the attendance classes have been redesigned, reducing the theoretical explanations by the lecturer and promoting the student participation and the practical learning. The problem-based learning has been considered the more suited active methodology for the academic level and the technical nature of the subject. With the end of evaluating the success degree of the pilot experience, different application forms and questionnaires have been designed and fulfilled by the lecturer or by the students, as appropriate. Mainly, they consist of observation cards to register the main events of each session, and different questionnaires to know the opinion of students and to quantify the degree of satisfaction. Besides, the improvement in learning results is quantified by the comparison of grades reached in different tests in the present course with those obtained in previous academic courses. The opinion poll shows that the traditional model is followed almost in all of the subjects, while just the 27% of students considers that their use of attendance classes is high or very high. The main demand from students (about 85%) is the increase of time devoted by the lecturer to solving of problems. After the implementation of FCM in an essential lesson of the subject, a 51% of them consider the learning level was high or very high, and an augmentation in 1.6 points was obtained in the test grade with respect to previous course, meaning a substantial improving in satisfaction degree and learning level.