The Impact of Non-Traditional Teaching on Students' Performance and Perceptions in a Structural Engineering Course

The Civil Engineering program at Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, redesigned its Structural analysis course to exploit the advantages of blended and flipped learning. The process focused on connecting the civil engineering education to professional practice throughout virtual field visits, hands-on activities, and real-world assignments and examinations. To evaluate the effects of the redesign on the student's learning experience, we conducted a multiphase mixed methods research (N = 329), which confirmed a positive impact on students' perceptions of their learning experience. Students value the greater availability of resources, considered to be a key factor to improve their learning. The redesign also promoted a greater interaction between peers and professors around problems closely related to professional engineering practice. Although we observed a lower final grade average, further analysis confirmed an increase in examinations difficulty and performance improvements when reviewing control test questions. Overall, the redesign had a positive influence on students and instructors by merging real-world problems with the classroom experience.