Effect of Flipping the Classroom on Student Performance in First-Year Engineering Courses

At the University of Cincinnati, three common courses were introduced during the 2012-2013 school year to provide first-year students with hands-on experiences in engineering and a link between engineering and the required mathematics and science courses. Two of these courses, Engineering Models I and II, form a two-semester sequence of interdisciplinary courses in which students apply fundamental theory from algebra, trigonometry, calculus and physics to relevant engineering applications chosen from a variety of disciplines. MATLAB is introduced and progressively developed as a programming tool to enable students to explore engineering concepts, to investigate solutions to problems too complex for hand solutions, to analyze and present data effectively, and to develop an appreciation of the power and limitations of computer tools. The Engineering Models sequence was required for all incoming first-year engineering and engineering technology students in 2012-2013. There were multiples sections of these courses with twelve different instructors. Common power-point presentations were provided for lecture. A student survey administered at the end of the sequence revealed that about half of the professors added in-class demonstrations using MATLAB during lecture while the other half simply read from the power-point slides. Students indicated that it would have been beneficial to spend more time in lecture learning to use MATLAB to solve problems prior to attending recitation. This year, 2013-2014, a flipped pedagogy is being implemented in the Engineering Models I and II courses. This paper focuses on the effect of the flipped pedagogy on student performance and on student attitudes toward an inverted classroom.