Enhancing student engagement through active learning

Teaching research methodologies to graduate students is important to help them succeed in their degree programs. At Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH), research methodologies in software engineering and computer science is a critical course, as it provides the students with the skills and knowledge necessary to conduct high-quality research for their master's thesis. More importantly, this course is mandatory in most degree programs at BTH, and the students are required to successfully complete this course as a pre-requisite for their master's thesis. Over the years, this course has been delivered using traditional teaching methods, such as lectures, assignments, readings, and feedback sessions. During the past years, as the course responsible, I observed that there had been a decline in the success rate for students in this course and a lack of student engagement. We identified that traditional teaching methods may not be the most effective way to engage students in this course. To this end, I introduced the concept of flipped classrooms and active learning classrooms (ALCs). During the ALCs, the students were asked to complete different tasks related to the concepts acquired through pre-recorded lectures and mandatory reading assignments. These tasks are done in student groups, and teachers promote open discussions between the students by problematizing the concepts.