Lessons Learned from Flipping a First-Year Industrial Engineering Course

Merging current pedagogical trends with 21st century student needs, the application of video technology in a first-year industrial engineering program through a flipped model of instruction used with team-based learning is analyzed for faculty considering such a conversion. The decision to flip a first-year classroom requires particular consideration with respect to content, student access to technology, and the learning environment. The flipped classroom’s efficacy (or lack thereof) has been described by many and is not debated in this paper; instead, a pragmatic approach for how to implement a flipped and team-based learning environment is presented. The authors, having just completed this process during the Fall 2014 semester in a first-year industrial engineering problem solving/programming course, have documented their journey so that others might follow it as a map without having to recreate the same knowledge. Major decisions that should be addressed, practical considerations for full implementation, and lessons learned are presented. ABET outcome assessment data from the pre- and post-flipped curriculum is presented and compared