A Study on the Student Success in a Blended-Model Engineering Classroom

One of the primary concern that many engineering educators face is the lack of engagement of students in their classroom. While literature suggests a variety of factors that might negatively influence student engagement, the theory of “Tailored Instructions and Engineered Delivery Using Protocols” (TIED UP) specifically addresses the lack of engagement arising from a weak pre-requisite base. TIED UP is a blended teaching model where the content delivery follows a set of protocols inspired by the brain-based learning approach. In a typical TIED UP classroom, content delivery is performed using short, animated and scripted concept videos that are generated before the class. These videos are discussed further in the classroom followed by a range of active learning exercises. Formative feedback is collected from these activities and this feedback will guide the activities in the following class. The videos are made available to the students for their further learning. This paper describes the implementation of the TIED UP approach in an engineering classroom in one of the largest public universities in the west coast. A study is conducted to compare the results of the summative assessments from a TIED UP classroom with those from a control semester. The paper will highlight the results from this implementation and some insights for other educators who wish to adapt this technique in their engineering classrooms