PHYSICAL MODELS AND BLENDED LEARNING: THEIR IMPACT IN CIVIL ENGINEERING STUDENTS

This paper presents a case study of students' perceptions and attitudes towards a Blended Learning (BL) course in Mechanics of Materials. The BL approach was conducted as an intent to enhance student's active participation in and outside classroom, as well as to allow them to acquire knowledge and skills by exploring their individual learning styles. In this approach, the professor videotaped part of the class and assigned them to students to watch and study outside the classroom as independent work prior to the face-to-face sessions. In the face-to-face sessions, work teams discussed the concepts introduced in the videos typically with the use of physical models to enhance and facilitate understanding. In this paper, the author presents the results of a survey responded by 98 out of 104 participants. The questionnaire was designed to measure the students' perceptions and attitudes towards BL. This study concludes that the majority of students have a good perception and attitude towards BL. They consider the class time is used in a more effective and efficient way, compared to traditional engineering lecture approaches. By contrast, they think that by using the BL methodology, they have to work extra time inside and outside the classroom and see it as a negative aspect.