Flipping the Classroom for a Class on Experimental Vibration Analysis

Flipped classroom is a relatively new teaching form in higher education which is aimed at improving the learning process by engaging students in pre-class video activities fostering more active discussions between lecturer and student in-class. The concept is that the students watch recorded lectures (lower-order thinking skills) at home prior to class. During the class the students work on assignments and discuss the course content which can make better use of the teacher as a facilitator, so the focus can be on the more difficult things (higher-order cognitive skills) in the course content. In the present paper, the design and implementation using the flipped classroom technique for a course on experimental vibration analysis is presented. Some important experiences are discussed and an evaluation of student experiences is presented. The outcome is that the teaching technique is relatively time consuming to implement, but that the students appreciate being able to watch the lectures at their own pace and having more time working with the difficult things together with the teacher. Also, it turned out that the way the videos were used was very different among different students.