Inverted Classroom Concept applied to a Chemical Thermodynamics Exercise

The Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Marketplace is a joint initiative by the vice rectorate for academic affairs and the vice rectorate for digitalisation and change management at TU Graz to modernize lectures. In the course of this initiative, a Chemical Thermodynamics exercise that is part of one bachelor program (Chemical & Process Engineering) and two master programs (Biorefinery Engineering and Chemical & Pharmaceutical Engineering) was transformed into the inverted classroom format.
The core of this concept are interactive notebooks created in Wolfram Mathematica for each individual calculation example. With these notebooks, students can work through the examples independently, in-depth and irrespective of time, with the required theoretical background integrated into the notebooks. In contrast to conventional teaching, the interactive part of the course does not involve calculating the examples in detail, but rather discussing the tactical approaches, solutions and problems that arose during the calculations, which raises the overall level of content teaching.
This contribution reports on the workflow of the transformation process from ex-cathedra teaching to the inverted classroom concept, the setup of the exercise, the innovative teaching materials used, the experiences with this concept from the point of view of teachers and students and presents results from a questionnaire-based evaluation of the notebooks and the new course design after two semesters.