The effect of the flipped classroom approach in an engineering course

Abstract In the Fall of 2013, the "flipped classroom" method was implemented in the Fluid Mechanics class offered primarily to juniors in the Civil and Mechanical Engineering departments. The course has long been considered a bottleneck course in students' graduation time and therefore the class has been flipped to drive active learning, student engagement, and enhanced overall class performance. In the flipped classroom, students watched video lectures beforehand to obtain the foundational knowledge and gave pre-class quizzes before coming to the class. During the face-to-face sessions in the classroom, students engaged with their peers and the instructor to solve problems. Since the lectures were covered in videos, students had more time to understand the problem statements and interact with the instructor to ask questions/clarify concepts. This study addresses the following three research questions: (1) does the flipped classroom improve students' overall performance, (2) does the flipped classroom improve the classroom learning environment, and (3) what are the advantage and disadvantage of the flipped classroom method? The research objectives have been assessed by the beginning and end-of-semester surveys, pre-class quizzes, homework, and exam results, classroom observations, and discussion. The exam scores are compared with those of the previous years to evaluate the effectiveness of the flipped classroom method in the class.