ABSTRACT
Out-of-class communication between teachers and students is essential throughout university engineering courses for in-depth explanations of the concepts covered in class. This study evaluates this aspect throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, a survey that addressed this issue was administered to students at the beginning (March 2020) and at the end (May 2020) of the COVID-19 lockdown in Spain, and at the end of each semester of the 2020/21 and 2021/22 academic years. The results were analyzed with statistical, qualitative, and mixed methods. E-mail usage was widely observed at the beginning of the pandemic, while the use of online videoconferencing tools progressed during that time, thanks to their temporal and spatial flexibility, and the direct and personal nature of student-teacher contact through those channels. Its success was linked to the prior training of teachers in the use of videoconferencing, the establishment of fixed schedules for the meetings, and the use of digital whiteboards that instantaneously display writing when discussing problems. According to the opinions of students, videocalls could be used for questions on theoretical and easy practical aspects despite the resumption of out-of-class face-to-face meetings. Videoconferencing tools for educational communication between engineering students and teachers seem to be here to stay. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
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The present study is related to the problem associated with student assessment with online examinations at higher educational institutes (HEIs). With the current COVID-19 outbreak, the majority of educational institutes are conducting online examinations to assess their students, where there would always be a chance that the students go for malpractice. It is difficult to set a question paper for any technical course with great novelty. Under these circumstances, safeguarding academic integrity has become a challenge for HEIs. This study is aimed at improving the quality of questions for online exams to increase the accountability of HEIs by proper evaluation of their students. A detailed procedure with suggestions for setting the questions for technical courses, in the format of assertion and reason, matching, multiple select types, etc., has been discussed with adequate examples. It deals with a strategy for ensuring that all the students are held to the standards that are reflected in their grades. The proposed evaluation method has been implemented on a test batch and presented the results along with a comparison with that of traditional question papers. It is witnessed that there is a simultaneous enhancement of students'learning as an additional benefit of implementing the proposed learning-oriented assessment method. IEEE
ABSTRACT
Microwave engineering is regaining importance as the world is witnessing the emergence of a new industrial revolution spearheaded by the internet of things and 5G communications and wireless networks. Preparing α-generation microwave engineering students for the future, especially in post-COVID era, represents a considerable challenge to universities worldwide that seldom offer a full autonomous course at the undergraduate level. Engineering curriculum should be revisited in order to incorporate skills suitable for work-based learning with emphasis on developing human-centred ICT competencies. Flipped classrooms are specifically attractive in engineering education to ensure deep comprehension of course material. A flipped microwave-engineering course with focus on amplifier design has therefore been re-designed with course learning outcomes aligned with Bloom's taxonomy and ABET program outcomes. The new learning cycle in the flipped mode, allow reaching the top cognitive pyramid where student exercised decision-making and practiced meta-cognitive knowledge and skills. The stretched flipped classroom represents a paradigm shift in instructional methodology and offers several advantages to the learning process at high cognitive levels as learning occurs in a comfortable pace where students collaborate with instructors in course design, curricula and delivery. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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This paper's objective is to document the incorporation of video technology with associated personality assessments into an undergraduate civil engineering curriculum for giving presentations. In 2020, video assignments were implemented into a laboratory that teaches stabilized soil, aggregates, concrete, and asphalt principles. This same laboratory has, for several years, required students to present to a panel of practitioners on open-ended topics based in the area of their laboratory experiments. A large practitioner and alumni survey documented the successfulness of these panels, which allow no electronics to be used, but also documented some items that technology based presentation assignments could improve. This paper summarizes the panel exercises and associated survey findings, and thereafter, describes the implementation of video presentations with associated personality assessments. The research question was whether video presentation assignments were useful in conjunction with the proven in-person practitioner panels toward improved student presentation skills. The collective findings of this paper support this laboratory incorporating video presentations, especially given the diversity in personalities identified during data collection. © 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). All rights reserved.
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Due to the impact of the pandemic situation, applying online learning methods become an immediate response to tackle the difficulties in teaching and learning, including software engineering courses. Online video meeting platforms (e.g., MS Teams, Webex) are popularly adopted as a medium between instructors and students to conduct online learning classes and they have been modified to provide functions supporting remote teaching and learning activities such as the breakout rooms for conducting group activities. However, maintaining student engagement is still a challenging problem in online learning. Especially, drawing students' attention and enhancing their experience during in-class activities (e.g., project presentations, group discussions) is critical to achieving of activities' objective. Virtual Reality (VR) has been considered to be a potential answer to this online teaching and learning enhancement. This study evaluates the benefit of adopting VR in software engineering class presentation activities. The evaluation result from 3 courses shows that VR improves the online learning and presentation experience by offering visual attractions and presence to students. © 2022 IEEE.
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Covid-19 has been a game-changer in engineering education at the higher education level. Even beyond the pandemic, blended learning is there to stay. The design, execution, and delivery of blended learning can be supported by a plethora of fast-developing educational technology. In this paper we share the experience of the evolution of one engineering course "Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence" from a rather traditional design strongly relying on face-to-face interaction to a fully blended technology-supported course. In particular, we share the experience of how an interactive courseware platform called "Nextbook", which allows students and teacher to directly interact on the course material, supported the design, implementation, and delivery. Student experiences measured using a questionnaire are supplemented with teacher experiences to present the following "lessons learnt": A well-chosen platform can help students find clear structure in a mix of types of material, and social annotation features make it possible to connect discussion and questions and answers directly to the course material. Further efforts are needed for engaging students to actively use the features of interactive courseware platforms. © 2022 SEFI 2022 - 50th Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education, Proceedings. All rights reserved.
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Critical circumstances, natural disasters or pandemics like COVID 19 gave rise to the wide applicability of E-learning into education system. Efficient and fair online assessment is very important to utilize the inevitable benefits of E-learning.. In order to make it efficient, the trend of assessment has shifted from the subjective type to the objective type assessments which is mainly based on Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs), generation of MCQs is a tedious, tiresome and time consuming task. To cater this dire need, this study proposes an automated Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) generation by utilizing state of the art transformer based model T5 for the task of question generation and a lexicon based approach Sense2vec for the task of distractor generation. It also presented a domain specific lecture text based test data for performing evaluation on the task of domain specific lecture text based MCQ generation. © 2022 IEEE.
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This paper documents the remote management of a first-year foundations of engineering course with special focus on students' learning by completing a prototype-based project in an online course. The COVID-19 pandemic brought on unprecedented challenges to the teaching and learning communities around the world. Educators made purposeful changes in their teaching approaches, shifting rapidly from in-person to online mode of instruction. This study documents a project-based course that adopted an asynchronous mode of instruction as a part of the general engineering curriculum at a large Southeast university in the United States during the pandemic. This asynchronous course - through implementing necessary changes and adaptations - simulated the experience of a cross-border engineering workplace. The course content focuses on engineering design and problem-solving, physical prototyping, simulated data collection and analysis, contemporary software tools, and professional practices and expectations (e.g., communication, teamwork, and ethics). Learning activities are designed to introduce students to the types of work that engineers do daily and to challenge students' knowledge and abilities as they explore the different elements of engineering by completing an aesthetic wind turbine project. Our paper reports on the development of the course site as informed by recent national developments in scholarship and practice for online teaching and learning. The principles of course design alignment as well as instructor presence and learner interaction as suggested by these national standards are discussed. Further, the study records strategies adapted to enable students to complete a successful prototype-based project working in geographically distributed and virtual, international teams. © 2022 SEFI 2022 - 50th Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education, Proceedings. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Microwave engineering is regaining importance as the world is witnessing the emergence of a new industrial revolution spearheaded by the internet of things and 5G communications and wireless networks. Preparing α-generation microwave engineering students for the future, especially in post-COVID era, represents a considerable challenge to universities worldwide that seldom offer a full autonomous course at the undergraduate level. Engineering curriculum should be revisited in order to incorporate skills suitable for work-based learning with emphasis on developing human-centred ICT competencies. Flipped classrooms are specifically attractive in engineering education to ensure deep comprehension of course material. A flipped microwave-engineering course with focus on amplifier design has therefore been re-designed with course learning outcomes aligned with Bloom's taxonomy and ABET program outcomes. The new learning cycle in the flipped mode, allow reaching the top cognitive pyramid where student exercised decision-making and practiced meta-cognitive knowledge and skills. The stretched flipped classroom represents a paradigm shift in instructional methodology and offers several advantages to the learning process at high cognitive levels as learning occurs in a comfortable pace where students collaborate with instructors in course design, curricula and delivery. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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CONTEXT Video usage in higher education has increased markedly over many years, but ongoing disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated this trend. Consequently, a growing number of educators are grappling with how to best approach video production. Although a range of factors such as video quality, video length, and the presenters' style are known to influence student engagement with videos, more research is needed to understand the extent to which these factors impact, particularly in higher education. This can support educators producing video content that prioritises those aspects which are most critical. PURPOSE This research seeks to understand what factors are most influential on students' decisions to engage versus disengage with video resources in the higher education context. This aims to develop a series of recommendations for educators to focus on when producing videos for inclusion in higher engineering education courses. APPROACH This research considers two mechanical engineering courses taught at different Australian universities. These courses used videos as the primary delivery mode during Semester 2 (July to November) of 2020. Approximately half of each course explicitly applied production recommendations of a highly influential study. Students were surveyed at the end of the semester about their engagement preferences. OUTCOMES The quality of the presenter's explanations and their enthusiasm in delivery were the most important factors influencing engagement, while seeing the presenter was least important. Video length and quality were more likely to cause disengagement when poor, than drive engagement when done well. CONCLUSIONS Characteristics of the presenter's delivery (that is the quality of their explanations and their enthusiasm) are more influential in producing engaging video content than technological choices relating to the video capture and length. Therefore, educators should seek to prioritise the quality of their explanations and their stage presence, before working to improve the video/audio capture quality and reducing video durations. Including the face of the instructor in educational videos has little impact on students' usage decisions. Copyright © J. Khanna and A. Bigham, 2021.
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CONTEXT Teamwork is one of the important graduate competencies expected of Engineering graduates by Engineers Australia. Engineering courses tend to teach teamwork in less structured ways, although in-person teamwork is systematically studied and implemented across a few programs. The transition to online learning during COVID-19 has explored options for online teamwork. PURPOSE OR GOAL This study aims to investigate the development of teamwork skills in electrical engineering courses. The idea is to explore and compare the experiences of online versus in-person teamwork in courses at different levels. The questions that will be addressed in this study are: (i) How do in-person and online team dynamics differ regarding challenges and strategies? (ii) How does students' experience of teamwork and leadership skills differ in different levels and types of courses? APPROACH Three courses that have teamwork activities are selected for this study. These courses are a large first year undergraduate (UG) course with about 500 students, a final year UG design course with about 100 students and a postgraduate course with about 200 students. The characteristics of these courses are widely different in terms of diversity, group collaboration, the teamwork task, and its assessment. The study then discusses the various models of the teamwork in these courses, both during the in-person and the online offerings. OUTCOMES The outcome of this study includes a reflection and comparison of the in-person and online offerings of the teamwork models in each of these courses based on student surveys and course performance. Recommendations for implementing teamwork based on the observations from the analysis are outlined. CONCLUSIONS The results indicated that there is no single dominant model for how teamwork skills are developed within an engineering program. However, a consistent model for implementing teamwork skills within the entire program may prove beneficial for students to develop these skills systematically and strategically. This study has demonstrated that teamwork skills awareness and development should be supported and evaluated within a degree program. Such a program-wide outlook for online versus in-person teamwork would benefit in informing future blended/hybrid options, post pandemic. Copyright © Jayashri Ravishankar, Swapneel Thite, Inmaculada Tomeo-Reyes, Arash Khatamianfar, 2021.
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CONTEXT A primarily undergraduate military college shifted from face-to-face instruction to emergency online instruction in Spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are examining student experiences with the shift using Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), which asserts that learning is hindered when cognitive load overwhelms finite working memory capacity. At the onset of the pandemic, we hypothesized that the need to manage learning in new and changing modalities may increase students' cognitive load and development. PURPOSE OR GOAL We seek to triangulate a previous finding that middle-years students experienced more cognitive load demands than either freshmen or seniors during the Spring 2020 semester. In this study, we examine cognitive load experienced by students in sophomore-, junior-, and senior-level civil engineering courses when engaging in various types of summative assessments. Our goal was to understand how academic course level and assessment type (closed-ended vs. open-ended) may have impacted cognitive load among students. APPROACH OR METHODOLOGY/METHODS We are engaged in a longitudinal mixed-methods study to explore the impacts of changing modalities on cognitive load and student development during the pandemic. For this study, we measured cognitive load experienced during five assessments administered across civil engineering courses of different academic levels using the NASA Task Load Index (TLX). The TLX is a rigorously-developed instrument that quantifies workload (a surrogate for cognitive load) across six dimensions: mental demand, physical demand, temporal demand, performance, effort, and frustration. We used non-parametric analysis to identify differences in cognitive workload by course level and assessment type. We supplemented interpretation of findings through analysis of open-ended questions and focus group transcripts. ACTUAL OR ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES Sophomores and juniors experienced summative assessments differently than seniors, a finding that is consistent with our previous publications suggesting that modality changes may have disproportionately impacted middle-years students. Analysis of TLX data showed that sophomores and juniors reported highest time-demand and frustration, respectively, during closed-ended assessments. Open-ended assessments elicited significant frustration among juniors, a trend that was not observed for seniors. Qualitatively, both sophomores and juniors discussed workload-associated aspects of the modality shift more than seniors. CONCLUSIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS/SUMMARY We seek to further understand the unique experiences of middle-years students as a means for developing recommendations for managing cognitive load during online engineering courses - whether planned or unplanned. Copyright © Mary K. Watson, Elise Barrella, Kevin Skenes, Benjamin Kicklighter and Aidan Puzzio, 2021.
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CONTEXT Nothing has changed the delivery of education as fast as the impact of COVID-19. Online learning is the 'new normal' with many STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) courses having to rapidly make this transition from traditional on-campus teaching. The literature shows that rich environments of formal face to face lectures and verbally engaging workshops provide a sense of community, social contracts and development of collegiate relationships between students. It is essential that education providers continue to offer opportunities for students to experience this element of higher education, rather than overlook this component of learning, as it can easily be lost in computer screen to computer screen engagement. PURPOSE OR GOAL This paper described how the literature surrounding online engagement was applied to enhance student engagement in a large cohort undergraduate course. In particular the transition from face to face to online and mixed modalities was investigated. Key engagement metrics as outlined in the literature and student survey results were utilised to gauge student satisfaction when development of a social environment is taken into consideration during course development. APPROACH OR METHODOLOGY/METHODS This work examines a transitioned large cohort course to quantify the effects of creating online community that replicates much of the face-to-face environment. It uses teaching survey instruments to identify pre and post intervention effectiveness from past cohorts and those exposed to the intervention. Semi structured surveys in the form of open questions were used to elicit free form responses and word frequency analysis is used to measure engagement. ACTUAL OR ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES In content heavy subjects such as STEM disciplines, the development of the online environment and teacher presence as well as social presence in subject delivery has a demonstratable effect on student engagement as measured by student satisfaction and learning outcomes. CONCLUSIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS/SUMMARY Key elements in the learning environment were found to have contributed substantially to the outcomes. These include supporting students in time management, supporting developing brains in undergraduate cohorts, peer interaction and developing online community. Although there was concern that the inclusion of online activities and games would be perceived as additional work, these contributed to enhanced student engagement in the online space. Copyright © Willis, Lee, James and Whale, 2021.
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Learning to use computational tools is a critical aspect of many first-year engineering courses. Students in these courses can have varying degrees of prior exposure to computational tools and often exhibit a wide range of intrinsic motivation for learning these skills. Interviews with first-year engineering students were conducted to study the degree to which motivation correlated with intended major within engineering. The pilot round of interviews was conducted in the spring of 2021. This pilot study used the same data set of 8 interviews to progressively refine both the survey and interview collection in the 2021 - 2022 academic year. This paper will review the results of the pilot study and detail the process used to develop and use the finalized protocol and coding schemes for a planned series of 20 interviews in Summer 2022. While this technique developed because of limited data collection during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been beneficial to the researcher and may provide guidance for future researchers. © 2022 IEEE.
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Remote teaching in engineering study courses has become more and more necessary since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many classes have to be given online, and while more theoretical subjects can more or less easily be adapted to a pure online version, especially engineering courses are hard to replace by virtual classrooms. As most engineering students will at some time be employed in industry, only teaching virtual courses lacks building up a gut feeling for the technical devices and thus leads to required additional training and diminished value of the education. This paper gives an overview on protocols and systems for remote laboratories as well as a presentation of an example experimental setup, namely a hardware model of a sophisticated elevator having two cabins in one shaft. © 2022 IEEE.
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In an age of geographically distributed software development teams, international communication skills are becoming ever more important to IT students. During the Covid-19 pandemic, contact and travel restrictions have made it almost impossible for students to gain international experience by spending a semester in a foreign country. One possible solution is to conduct distributed courses in software engineering as a virtual cooperation between two universities. Experiences gained during a hybrid, distributed course on global software engineering are presented. The challenges encountered when coordinating a course that takes place simultaneously in two countries are reported. Feedback from students and professors are discussed and recommendations for future work are derived from these lessons learned. © 2022 ACM.
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The pedagogy of a first-year engineering course in manufacturing is presented. This course entitled Manufacturing and Society involves collaboration with social science, is based on industrial robots as the central theme to attract students’ interests and utilizes the flipped classroom approach for delivery. We hypothesize that, in one semester, recent high school graduates will be able to gain knowledge in manufacturing by learning the computer-aided engineering (CAD) software, applying CAD to design a penholder, fabricating the penholder using additive manufacturing and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software, programming the robot to create a toolpath for the pen, drawing using the pen on the penholder guided by a robot, and elaborating on impacts of robotic painting on society from a social science perspective. This course is designed to give students, regardless of their intended major in engineering, broad knowledge in manufacturing via 10 engineering, 3 social science, and 10 technical communication lectures;8 labs;and 4 projects. The social science lectures and discussions focus on how knowledge about society can be used to inform design and manufacturing decisions, social science research methods for understanding how engineers and technology can impact people's lives, and changing trends in work, the workplace, and the future workforce as it relates to manufacturing. This course aimed to give undergraduate first-year engineering students a positive view of advanced manufacturing and its impact on society. Student evaluations and comments were positive and affirmed the learning objective of teaching manufacturing to the first-year engineering students. The flipped classroom approach was demonstrated to be ideal during the COVID-19 pandemic with limited capacity for in-person lectures and labs. The use of flipped classrooms allowed students to learn at their own pace, review and reinforce knowledge, have a closer interaction with instructors, and reduce the number of technical errors using simulation tools. This course with the support of flipped classroom pedagogy can be successfully implemented in the post-pandemic era, devoting the time of the class to answer questions, expand upon the class content and have a closer in-person interaction with students. © 2022
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The COVID19 pandemic has resulted in many institutions having limited options of instructional modes and tools that can be used when the schools are closed. Many institutions in the United States and around the world moved some or all of their courses to fully online back in April of 2020. Faculties and students faced new challenges with new tools that each had to learn and use effectively to deliver and receive the lecture material as efficiently as possible. The impact of COVID19 on engineering courses is going to go beyond the Spring semester of 2020. The aim of the study is to highlight the real impact of COVID19 on engineering students for a Thermodynamics I course during the pandemic where half of the semester was delivered online and a Thermodynamics II course during the Summer semester of 2020 which was fully online. The study illustrates how the lockdown impacted the students' learning outcome for both courses. Moreover, the study illustrates the most impacted learning outcome of the course compared to the previous two semesters. The results of this analysis describe the real impact of COVID19 on Thermodynamics I and II course outcomes and how it can be corrected in case the same situation happens in the future. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.
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This Work in Progress Paper presents techniques adapted to teach first-year engineering courses post-pandemic. Challenges faced by students and faculty will also be presented in this paper along with some guidance and best practices. In March 2020, COVID-19 was announced as a pandemic that began impacting higher education during the Spring semester. Many land-grant universities were not fully equipped with the tools to offer the best learning experience to students due to lock-down and the inability to access the laboratories and teaching equipment. This global pandemic had caused the universities to change their operations and impelled instructors to switch to online instruction halfway into the semester. Many universities began exploring options and investing their resources to devise teaching pedagogies that best fit the needs of their students. Although universities had been utilizing some learning management systems such as Blackboard, D2L, Canvas, etc., an unanticipated need for online instruction impelled a mandated use of these learning management systems for full content delivery. Although engineering courses could easily be revamped to distance learning platforms, there were some challenges due to the nature of the coursework and assessment of outcomes. Adhering to the social distancing guidelines and university mask mandates along with the availability of vaccination have made it possible to return to in-person teaching and learning. The purpose of this paper is to: a) present some of the challenges faced by the first-year engineering students during the transition to and from distance learning approaches, b) share some of the results from the assessment of student attitudes during this transition, and c) share some of the best practices adopted by the instructors during these uncertain times. The first-year engineering curriculum usually involves fundamental concepts and provides an opportunity for students to explore several engineering disciplines. In a normal learning environment, engineering courses tend to be challenging due to higher expectations for problem-solving, mathematics, and scientific concepts, and adding external factors such as the pandemic adds more complications. Since the pandemic began in early 2020, students and instructors have been under constant pressure to satisfy the basic requirements of attaining student learning objectives. In this process of attaining the objectives, several challenges had been encountered and overcome in different ways. The focus of this research work is to study the first-year engineering course and present the challenges associated with the delivery of the course content, teaching engineering concepts and applications in a remote setting, and communication between instructors and students during the lock-down period. This paper also presents some of the teaching strategies that have been investigated by the instructors to assist students during difficult times while balancing student expectations. This work in progress study was initiated in Spring 2020 at a small regional campus of The Ohio State University. Challenges arising due to the transition to and from distance learning modalities were observed in the first-year engineering courses, Fundamentals of Engineering I and Fundamentals of Engineering II. These courses are two-credit hours each and introduce engineering problem-solving, data analysis, project-based learning, computer programming, 3-D Modeling and simulation, project management, and teamwork. Teaching strategies adopted by the instructors including restructuring the course, revisioning the assessment of course goals, and utilizing alternative approaches to assess student performance will be discussed in this paper. The findings of this paper will provide an opportunity for educators to learn from the unique experience and develop strategies to address the continuously changing teaching and learning environments that have evolved as a result of the pandemic. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.
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Science kits have been a staple of learning for some time, but in the era of COVID-19 at-home science kits took specific prominence in educational initiatives. In this paper, we delineate how kit-based education can be paired with virtual connection technology to enhance postsecondary and career exploration. The “Content, Connection and Careers” kit-based program has been developed to enable youth to explore electrical engineering principles while connecting virtually with university students to discuss engineering courses and careers. When assembled and wired up, the kit components become linear motors that use a magnetic force to pull a bolt into a pipe when youth press a button. This follows the same working principles as a doorbell or solenoid. These kits are supported by virtual learning sessions where youth connect with university students and faculty to fully understand the educational content, connect to peers and caring adults to share their learning, and explore careers that use electrical engineering skills. To investigate the effectiveness of the program, surveys were distributed to participants to understand whether the kits were simple enough for independent learning but robust enough to encourage additional self-exploration of more difficult topics with the aid of expert scientists and other adult role models. Additionally, youth were asked if the connections made with university faculty and students was beneficial in their thinking of postsecondary options and college engagement. Over 60 elementary and middle-school aged youth participated in the project. Over 80 percent of survey respondents self-reported improved knowledge of how an electromagnetic field works and how to build a simple electromagnet. Other results showed an increased understanding of engineering careers and courses required to study electric engineering in college. Before their experience in the project, very few of the young people had ever talked to university faculty or university students about their areas of research or their journey into the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). This connection was described in the surveys as what the youth liked best about the project. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.