Determining the Students' Preferable Learning Mode for both Traditional Classrooms Teaching Under Normal Situations and Forced Virtual Teaching in Quarantine Period

ABSTRACT

The Research to Practice Full Paper aims to determine the students' preferable learning mode for traditional classroom teaching under typical situations and forced virtual teaching in quarantine. Although many academic institutions have promoted online and distance education, face-to-face traditional classroom teaching has always been the dominant approach in the US. However, the sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 disease forced the academic institutions to convert the entire curriculum into a virtual method of teaching and learning. This drastic change in the educational system has dramatically impacted educators and students, and very little is known about the students' preferred teaching and learning mode. In this regard, the present study collected data from the civil engineering department at the University based on a questionnaire survey. A total of 337 students participated and responded to 18 multiple-choice questions. The questionnaire was divided into four parts admission information, activity information, Fundamentals of Engineering Examination (FE exam) planning, and preferred teaching mode. The preferred teaching mode is further divided into 'Synchronous' that represents scheduled and live virtual engagements with students such as zoom meetings and ' Asynchronous', representing prerecorded lectures such as watching YouTube videos. This study performed two analyses to obtain precise results regarding (1) online vs. traditional classroom learning, (2) synchronous vs. asynchronous learning. For this purpose, distinct tree-based methods, including bagging, boosting, and random forest were employed to investigate the significant factors that affect the students' choice of learning modes under different circumstances. The findings reveal that the activities such as participation in clubs or organizations, internships, or jobs, are the statistically significant factors that play a vital in the students' choice of teaching and learning mode under different situations. This study is expected to provide crucial insights for the academic professionals in adopting the teaching and learning modes that would substantially improve and enhance the quality of education.