FOSTERING RESPONSIBILITY-CENTERED LEARNING IN A SOFTWARE ENGINEERING COURSE WITH FLIPPED CLASSROOM

A recurring issue we observe with traditional teaching methods in basic software engineering courses at KU Leuven is poor engagement of students that may result in superficial knowledge. To investigate and tackle this issue, we designed a responsibility-centered learning approach using flipped classroom. Flipped classroom is a pedagogical approach that has shown to enhance student engagement in the learning process. We designed a flipped classroom approach centered on enhancing student's responsibility in the learning process, targeting the specific challenges of poor engagement of students in the courses. The approach combines guided self-study of the learning material with student-driven elaboration of the material during deepening sessions. We have applied the approach in a basic software engineering course in two academic years. Student feedback of the first year indicated that the workload was perceived too high, so we adapted the approach for the second year resolving this issue. The experience shows that flipping the classroom had no direct effect on study results, but, by making students owners of the learning process, they report that the approach fosters their engagement and enables them to obtain deeper understanding of the course material.