The promotion of active learning has been demonstrated to be an effective method for students to construct their knowledge and develop higher-level competencies. However, it does require a certain amount of teaching preparation and an understanding of its benefits by the students. As it implies more work in class, students tend to resist it. This work presents a didactic approach in a physics course in a civil engineering major, over two years. A continuous assessment was set up to support a flipped classroom approach in the theoretical classes. The results demonstrated that students who perceived the benefits of the active learning tasks and engaged in the weekly study and performance of the proposed tasks achieved significantly higher academic results. Overall, 72% of the students who embraced the active learning continuous assessment and engaged in the weekly tasks achieving more than 8 values (out of 20), were approved in the course. In contrast, of those who were reluctant to make this effort, only 33% completed the course. It was notable that the working students, when embracing active learning, achieved success (100% both years) and also higher grades. The number of types of active learning tasks undertaken was also significantly correlated with student results (and higher for working students).