Applying student engagement techniques to multidisciplinary online engineering laboratories

Abstract

As engineering departments continue to expand their online course offerings, they face the challenge of translating onsite best practices into online environments in order to maintain student engagement and enhance student persistence. In this paper we will describe how we implemented and assessed face-to-face classroom techniques related to group discussions and laboratory activities to a new multidisciplinary online course, Engineering Problem Solving Laboratory (EGR 320L) at National University. Specifically, end-of-course evaluations in twelve offerings of EGR 320L were analyzed to see if there was any significant difference between student assessments of online and onsite courses or between engineering and computer science students taking these courses. Before analyzing the student assessment data, the learning activities designed for EGR 320L will be described, which include both synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous elements. The goal was to engage online students as well as onsite students in the multidisciplinary course content that included mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and thermodynamics. Analysis showed that the multidisciplinary course was very successful since the average teaching assessment scores (on a scale of 1-5, where 1 is poor and 5 is excellent) for both course modes were very high, 4.15/5 for onsite courses and 4.30/5 for online courses.