Implementing Flipped Classroom in the School of Architecture

Abstract

Teaching methodologies are under permanent development and innovation in higher education. One of the main pillars of these techniques is the student-centered learning, which implies shifting the focus of the instruction from the teacher to the student, aiming to develop learner autonomy and independence. Among these methodologies, Flipped Classroom pursues to facilitate and potentiate different learning processes such as acquisition of information and practical knowledge in the classroom, by transferring other processes out of it. In the present work, Flipped Classroom was used in a group of 7 students of 2nd course of the School of Architecture of the European University of Valencia. The activity consisted of the students preparing specific materials dealing with concepts related to Structural Mechanics in order to develop and explain them to the rest of the group. The activity was exposed to the students and they were given two weeks to prepare it. At the end of the process, the students fulfilled a questionnaire to rate different items related to the experience. Students’ answers indicated that, in general, the activity was perceived as interesting and useful. In addition, more than half of participants stated that Flipped Classroom had a positive impact in their learning skills, as well as the time spent in preparing the activity was worthy the learning results. However, most of the students considered that only one Flipped Classroom per course was enough, so this methodology should be combined with others in order to avoid saturation. The present paper reflects on these results and aims to explain the evaluation of the activity.