Problem-solving skills areimportant at the workplacein Culinary Arts for initiating innovative andcreative solutions. However, graduates from community colleges in Malaysia seem to haveonlyaverage level of problem-solving skills, while instructors do not seem to emphasise developing problem-solving skillswhen conducting lessons. Hence, providing more opportunities in solving real-world problems forwork is required. AFlipped Classroom approachbeginswith activities conducted with video lectureson key conceptsand gatekeeperquizzesto be completed before class andin-class phase spent onapplying concepts learned before class usingproblem-solvingactivities. In this study, aProblem-Solving Flipped Classroom (PSFC) module designed for students in the Culinary Arts programmein a Malaysian Community College based on Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction and the Cognitive Apprenticeship frameworkwas employed andimplemented among 30 first-semester studentsand one participating instructorin a selected Community College.The single group pretest and post test quasi-experimental design wasusedto investigate the effectiveness of the PSFC module for learning and problem solving.Using t-test analysis, thefindings indicated that the studentshad significant learning gains and improvement in problem-solving skills after using the module.Hence, the PSFC module could be usedin Culinary Arts at other Community Colleges and TVET institutions to improve problem-solving skills among Culinary Arts students.Thisis to ensurea significantamount of instructionat Community Colleges include problem-solving instructionusing authentic tasks at a level suitable for students to acquire problem-solving skills required in the workforce.

Culinary Arts is an area in Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET)

Flipped Classroom enables instructors to spend more time for hands-on problem-solving instruction compared to the traditional pedagogical model which involves lectures. The purpose of this study is to determine the need for a problem-solving flipped classroom module to be designed for the STM3023: Internet of Things (IoT) subject offered at the Certificate level at Malaysian Community Colleges. A structured interview was conducted with 16 lecturers from 14 Community Colleges offering the subject to obtain their views on current teaching practices along with the challenges faced in the teaching and learning of IoT to entry level students. Participants were also asked about their readiness towards the flipped classroom following an orientation session on Flipped Classroom approach. The findings showed that lecturers mostly used traditional pedagogical models in the TVET settings such as lectures. Students usually followed instructions and merely replicate the hands-on tasks as demonstrated by their lecturers in class. It was also found that students were struggling with the subject due to their lack of competency in programming and grasping electrical and electronics concepts. Students were also found to be weak in mathematics and reasoning skills, thus making it a challenge to teach IoT to them. Therefore, a myriad of media, materials and application of real-world concepts may be required to aid lecturers to improve students’ achievement in the subject. The flipped classroom approach for teaching which gives more time for hands-on problem-solving instruction may be appropriate to support lecturers to overcome the challenges in teaching IoT.