Content area
Full Text
Abstract
This paper introduces a multidisciplinary energy management course redesigned to include experiential learning philosophy and partially flipped classroom concept to improve course delivery effectiveness. The course was originally proposed to address the surging demand in the local industries that benefit from understanding energy utilization and its economics. Instructors previously experienced difficulties in engaging students who had neglible energy management backgrounds. Therefore, the course materials were updated to include 10 new laboratory experiments, a real-world project, and an industry visit. In addition, the partially flipped classroom technique was adopted as an instructional strategy. Data analyses demonstrated that the employment of the two modifications resulted in more satisfied students with higher learning outcomes. The paper provides energy management educators a new model in course delivery and at the same time endorses experiential learning in a partially flipped classroom setting.
1.Introduction
Many pedagogical research articles discuss the benefits of experiential learning on students' success. A recent article about the flipped classroom teaching style shows that the number of publications dedicated to flipped classrooms has grown significantly as online learning has become increasingly normalized in both secondary schools and higher education (Casselman et al. 2020). According to Desai, Bhandiwad, and Shettar, adults like to learn by doing (2018). To help provide experiential learning techniques, several classroom instructors have adopted pedagogical tools such as problem-based learning (Rad et al. 2017), projectbased learning (Hosseinzadeh and Hesamzadeh 2012; Sanchez-Romero et al. 2019), flipped classroom learning (Akayr and Akayr, 2018), and learning with retrieval-based concept mapping (Blunt and Karpicke, 2014.
A randomized controlled trial experiment was performed for a targeted improvement in student learning in the chemistry classroom (Casselman et al. 2020). It is suggested that flipped classrooms generally lead to improved performance on summative assessments and higher course grades, and chemistry instructors should strongly consider adopting this classroom structure. Yamarik (2019) taught four sections of an international economics course by selecting two sections using the flipped format (treatment) and another two using a traditional lecture (control) with measures of student interest, achievement, and attendance collected. The results from the study suggest that the flipped format may have increased learning productivity. The study of motivation and learning in a flipped classroom setup was conducted by Xiu and Thompson (2020). According to...