A flipped mode teaching approach for large and advanced electrical engineering courses

ABSTRACT

A fully flipped mode teaching approach is challenging for students in advanced engineering courses, because of demanding pre-class preparation load, due to the complex and analytical nature of the topics. When this is applied to large classes, it brings an additional complexity in terms of promoting the intended active learning. This paper presents a novel selective flipped mode teaching approach designed for large and advanced courses that has two aspects: (i) it provides selective flipping of a few topics, while delivering others in traditional face-to-face teaching, to provide an effective trade-off between the two approaches according to the demands of individual topics and (ii) it introduces technology-enabled live in-class quizzes to obtain instant feedback and facilitate collaborative problem-solving exercises. The proposed approach was implemented for a large fourth year course in electrical power engineering over three successive years and the criteria for selecting between the flipped mode teaching and traditional teaching modes are outlined. Results confirmed that the proposed approach improved both students’ academic achievements and their engagement in the course, without overloading them during the teaching period.

KEYWORDS:

• Flipped mode teaching
• large class
• power engineering
• advanced course
• analytical course

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to thank Ms Gladys Fong, Administrator Officer with the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, for providing the data on students’ WAMs.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr Jayashri Ravishankar is with the School of the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, UNSW since 2010. Her research and teaching areas are in electrical power engineering. She is interested in technology-enabled teaching and implements various strategies to improve students’ active learning. She publishes in the IEEE Teaching And Learning in Engineering (TALE) conference every year. In 2016, she received the Teaching Excellence Award in Engineering at UNSW.

A/Prof Julien Epps is with the School of the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, UNSW for more than 10 years. His research and teaching areas are in image processing. He is currently the Deputy Head of the School (Education). He has been instrumental in creating interactive labs for undergraduate students. In 2016, he received the Vice Chancellor’s award for teaching excellence at UNSW.

Prof Eliathamby Ambikairajah is with the Head of School in Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, UNSW. His research and teaching areas are in signal processing. He has received several excellence awards both for his teaching and leadership at UNSW.