ABSTRACT
Delivering hands-on design and manufacturing courses is challenging in several lecture and laboratory settings. This type of instruction is even harder lately due to higher education institutions' strict COVID-19 policies and procedures, since offering the courses in on-ground settings is not a possibility. One method practiced by a high number of educators to meet course learning outcomes and ABET student outcomes is to implement the Flipped Classroom technique. In a Flipped Classroom, course lectures and laboratories are provided to students earlier than the class time. Then, class times are used to provide more practice and content so that students can learn more in their regular lectures and lab hours. This paper reports the structure of a few Flipped Classroom courses from a diverse group of institutions and the evaluation results received from these courses. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022
ABSTRACT
During the period of the Covid-19 pandemic, the traditional education structure as we know it has been largely transformed due to lockdowns and social distancing. This study is a detailed description of how a normally face-to-face undergraduate course in digital design with laboratory sessions at the University of Iceland was transformed into a fully online based course. We show the essentialities required to transform the lectures and laboratory sessions from local to online. Furthermore, we compare the students' performance during the online teaching with that of previous students who participated in local teaching. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
During the spring 2020 academic term, students and instructors were required to transition from in-person instruction to a virtual learning mode. This transition occurred at the mid-point of the semester, moving from an in-person student-teacher interaction to a virtual environment. While this transition was unexpected for students and instructors, it was also an opportunity to understand how student learning outcomes were affected and how students reacted to this change. Both lecture and laboratory sections were evaluated in this study, for both lower-division and upper-division courses. Through a comparative survey, students were asked to evaluate the seven student learning outcomes articulated by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) during the in-person and virtual portions of the courses. Survey results showed that students rated their learning outcomes higher for in-person instruction for all course types and levels. The largest difference in how students rated their learning outcomes for before and after the transition to virtual instruction was seen for their ability to function effectively on a team. The smallest difference was seen for their ability to apply engineering design to produce solutions. Additionally, in a time in which our society required social distancing, students expressed that their biggest struggle was that they could not interact with their peers. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this research study was to examine the impact of the transition to remote learning in a senior-level elective class in transportation engineering with lecture and laboratory components at the Pennsylvania State University. Specifically, the study seeks to determine how the transition to remote instruction impacted student perceptions of the learning environment as it relates to the development of their professional expertise. Students' perception on the learning environment was measured using the Supportive Learning Environment for Expertise Development Questionnaire (SLEED-Q) [1]. The SLEED-Q was administered to students in Fall 2018 and Fall 2019 (normal instruction) and compared with responses obtained from Fall 2020 (remote instruction). Prior data (2018, 2019) was collected for baseline comparison as part of a larger curricular revision project to examine the impact of inquiry-based learning activities intended to be implemented in 2020. However, these activities were not implemented as planned due to the COVID pandemic. Instead, the course was taught using normal methods and techniques, except for the transition to a hybrid format. Lectures were performed synchronously online, while field-based laboratory activities that were intended to reinforce the concepts taught in the lecture were performed in-person. Due to social distancing regulations, instructions on the laboratory activities were provided virtually (instead of in-person in prior semesters) and immediate assistance was only available through phone calls or video conferencing. The results suggest that the remote instruction approach was able to maintain the same supportive environment as normal, in-person instruction and perhaps even provide a more supportive environment in some respects. These results demonstrate that there could be some positive features of remote instruction that could be integrated into normal, in-person instruction to support the development of professional expertise. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021
ABSTRACT
Since Learning Management Systems (LMS) appeared some 20 years ago, their experimentation grew slowly, compared with the explosion that occurred after the Covid-19 emergency. Due to the closure of schools and universities worldwide, every educational institution and their teachers had to move towards the usage of LMSs for Online Distance Learning (ODL). This obliged the teachers to quickly familiarize with such kind of didactics and every kind of course faced these new opportunities. Machine Drawing is a course that requires much interaction between teachers and students and may not exploit validly many modalities invented in LMS. This paper presents the experiences done implementing online didactics, trying to apply all the online tools to the traditional way of teaching. Mainly laboratory activities, made online, must reproduce the interaction made in-person. Nevertheless, online connections opened new ways to try stricter relationships between the teacher and those students, who have less skill, even shyness, and then may accumulate delays. Differentiating the way in which didactics (lecture and laboratory) may be delivered, some traditional techniques have been improved. Employment the video recording of all activities done has given students the opportunity to repeat the more delicate steps of some topics. The check online of designs and elaborations by instructors allows students to be more concentrated on explanation, which may be done collectively or singularly. Comparing the results of exams before and after online didactics revealed that the number of students that passed the exam and the average of reached grade grew significantly. © PDE 2021.