Flipped classroom improves the student's exam performance in a first year engineering course

This paper presents results from an ongoing study into what is needed in order to improve student's understanding of the material taught and trained in a first year's engineering course. Presented are results of comparing two reverse teaching approaches to a conventional teaching approach based on student's performance in a final written exam and the student's satisfaction with the course. In this study, the authors tested two reverse teaching approaches - one carried out in 2015 and the other in 2016 - and compared the results to a baseline set in a previous study where a conventional teaching approach was studied over a 10 year period. For the reverse teaching, the lectures were recorded using a screen video recording software which recorded both the lecturer's voice and the activities on the screen. This allowed the students to watch the lectures at their convenience. The lectures were given by the same lecturer as in the previous study and the material and the textbook were the same. In 2015 the lectures were fully removed but the lecturer showed up to answer questions regarding the recorded lectures. In 2016, the lectures were used to cover selected topics from the week's material and to allow the students to practice their skills by hand. The results reveal that there is a positive relation between flipped classroom and exam grade average and a strong indication that doing exercises as part of lecturer - student meetings will improve exam grade.