A review of Nontraditional Teaching Methods: Flipped Classroom, Gamification, Case Study, Self-Learning, and Social Media

---

education 
sciences
Review
A Review of Nontraditional Teaching Methods:
Flipped Classroom, Gamification, Case Study,
Self-Learning, and Social Media
Elnaz Safapour, Sharareh Kermanshachi * and Piyush Taneja
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington; Arlington, TX 76019, USA;
[e-mail] (E.S.); [e-mail] (P.T.)
*
Correspondence: [e-mail]
Received: 8 October 2019; Accepted: 11 November 2019; Published: 14 November 2019

Abstract:
Traditional teaching methods rely solely on the use of textbooks, but teaching e
ff
ectiveness
assessment methods have demonstrated that most students taught by this method do not absorb the
course content up to the expected level. Multiple researchers have introduced nontraditional teaching
methods, but there is no scientific consensus on the best nontraditional teaching methods that are
tailored to learners’ abilities while most e
ff
ectively addressing the course objectives. Therefore, the
goal of this review was to address the following questions across all engineering disciplines, based
on learners’ abilities and the course objectives: (a) What are the benefits of nontraditional teaching
methods? and (b) How would you categorize the benefits of nontraditional teaching methods?
A qualitative review was conducted to achieve these goals, and the initial search for papers, using
relevant keywords, resulted in more than 2000 peer-reviewed articles that were published between
2000 and 2017. A total of 125 peer-reviewed articles pertaining to the most frequently studied
nontraditional teaching methods were comprehensively studied and analyzed. The analysis resulted
in practical guidelines, including a list of the benefits of the five studied nontraditional teaching
methods (flipped classroom, gamification, case study, self-learning, and social media) belonging to
four categories: technical
/
professional, personal skills
/
ability, personal attitude, and time and space.
Based on the results, the authors established significant guidelines for instructors who aim to optimize
learners’ achievements by adopting the most e
ff
ective teaching styles, based on their course objectives
and the learners’ abilities.