The Abrupt Shift to Full Online and then Blended Learning at a French Engineering School: Difficulties and Practices, Reaction and Adaptation

ISAE-Supmeca, a French engineering school located in the great Paris area, has been engaged in active learning, especially problem- and project-based learning (PBL), since decades. This experience, including some remote activities, gave background for the institution to get through lockdown and forced remote learning due to the covid-19 pandemic situation. Nevertheless, the shock of shifting in one week-end to full remote learning was abrupt. ISAE-Supmeca, and especially two of its units (the Learners’ Affairs Department – LAD, and the Educational Innovation Unit – EIU), held discussion with learners and teachers in order to help them to cope with the situation. The two units also conducted a work in four phases (monitoring, analyzing, proposing and capitalizing) based on a series of surveys realized from June 2020 to June 2021. This paper presents the results of the monitoring, as well as a part of the analysis phase results. More precisely, in this work, the description of the actors’ reactions and the adaptation of the learning process during the pandemic situation are detailed. Moreover, an attempt to compare the collected data of ISAE-Supmeca to a part of results from a study realized at California State University is made. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The shift to online and blended learning at an engineering school: Feedback and results

ISAE-Supmeca is a French engineering school located in the north of the great Paris area. It has been engaged since decades in active learning, especially problem-and project-based learning. During the last ten years, ISAE-Supmeca has gained experience in leading or participating in several French and European educational research projects. This led to the set-up of an Educational Innovation Unit, at the interface of teachers and learners. Among other tasks and in collaboration with teachers, this unit coordinates and participates in several educational research projects, maps issues encountered in the learning process, assists teachers and proposes new educational tools. As well as all scientific and technical higher education institutions, ISAE-Supmeca has been impacted by the covid-19 pandemic situation. The experience of problem-and project-based learning helped the institution and its actors to quickly adapt to a full remote education (online), then to a partly remote education (blended for some modules), but it was not without any issues. So, a follow-up with surveys and analysis took place in order to map the main issues, the solutions adopted and the evolution of the situation. The main goal of this data collection and analysis is to formalize feedback, extract results and then have grounds to better implement the mid-or long-term adaptations, i.e. carry out a three-phase work: reaction, analysis and action. All ISAE-Supmeca teachers and learners were asked several times for feedback on their experience during the pandemic period and their participation made this analysis and this paper possible. © 2021 IEEE.

Virtual design office: Proposition of problem- And project-based learning solution in the COVID-19 era and beyond

SFPMECA has chosen since decades to engage in Problem- and Project-Based Learning (PBL). In the framework of this orientation and as a part of a reflection on the enhancement of hybridization of teaching methods in the wake of COVID-19 crisis, our paper presents the first results of an ongoing study. This study aims to propose a virtual Design Office called 'BE Virtual' as a solution to facilitate implementing PBL approaches in engineer curriculum. To reach our goal, a 'Design Thinking' inspired methodology and the modeling language SysML are used. © 2021 IEEE.