A flipped classroom approach was implemented in an undergraduate fluid mechanics course. Students watched short, online video lectures before class, participated in active in-class problem solving sessions (in pairs), and completed individualized online quizzes weekly. In-class activities were designed to develop problem-solving skills and teach…

In the 2013-2014 school year, we implemented the "flipped classroom" as part of an initiative to drive active learning, student engagement and enhanced learning in our school. The flipped courses consisted of freshman through senior engineering classes in introductory programming, statics/mechanics, mechanical design, bio-thermodynamics,…

Faculty at Rice University are creating instructional resources to support teaching first-year engineering design using a flipped classroom model. This implementation of flipped pedagogy is unusual because content-driven, lecture courses are usually targeted for flipping, not project-based design courses that already incorporate an abundance of…

Engineering students benefit from an active and interactive classroom environment where they can be guided through the problem solving process. Typically faculty members spend class time presenting the technical content required to solve problems, leaving students to apply this knowledge and problem solve on their own at home. There has recently…

Historically, classroom content delivery has relied on lecture, but recently there has been a call for educators to use active learning to promote student engagement and a deeper understanding of the material (Bonwell and Eison 1991; Erickson 1984; Cross 1987; Prince 2004; Bodnar and Clark 2014). According to Prince (2004) active learning is any…

Overcoming the challenge of using the steam tables can be considered a rite of passage in undergraduate thermodynamics courses. Students often circumvent the use of steam tables and resort to simpler digital alternatives to retrieve properties. In fact, the steam tables and their digital relatives that supply numeric property values fail to…

This paper describes the problem-solving studio (PSS) learning environment. PSS was designed to teach students how to solve difficult analytical engineering problems without resorting to rote memorization of algorithms, while at the same time developing their deep conceptual understanding of the course topics. There are several key features of…

For the 2020 spring term, courses needed to switch from traditional in-person formats to an online format in about a week due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper presents the process and tools used to flip the course content and deliver a dynamic systems and controls course online. Initial feedback was gathered through end of term evaluations and…