Student performance, engagement, and satisfaction in a flipped Statics and Mechanics of Materials classroom: A Case Study.

This paper presents a case study of the evidence-based practice of flipping a classroom. The flipped (or inverted) classroom has long been promoted as a method of improving student engagement in the classroom as it creates opportunities for active learning experiences during lecture time that would otherwise be consumed by passive instruction. A flipped classroom relies on students to independently prepare for class prior to the scheduled lecture time, typically by watching pre-lecture videos or by reading material assigned by the instructor. Having been exposed to the lecture material, synchronous class time can be used to complete active learning exercises in small groups with direct oversight and immediate feedback offered by the instructor. At Johns Hopkins University, Statics & Mechanics of Materials has been taught using a traditional lecture-style instructional mode to civil, environmental, and mechanical engineering majors for many years. Aware of the documented benefits of the flipped classroom model, in 2019 the author created a library of pre-lecture videos and accompanying in-class learning exercises to experiment with this instructional mode. In 2020, when universities shifted to virtual instruction as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the author used these same materials to create an online version of the flipped classroom. Thus, over a three-year period, a single author teaching the same class with the same content and assessment methods collected data to evaluate the impacts of three different instructional modes on student performance, engagement, and satisfaction. In total, data from course evaluations, class attendance, and performance on final exams was collected from 213 students who took the course from 2018 to 2020. Consistent with the findings of previous studies, the data presented in this paper demonstrates that the flipped classroom results in greater student engagement and a higher level of student satisfaction with both the course and the instructor. The impact on student performance, however, is inconclusive, primarily due to the quasi-experimental nature of the study. Beyond presenting the results of the study, this paper will also describe the implementation of specific elements of the flipped and online flipped classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]