Teaching innovation with technology to accelerate engineering students' learning

Abstract

The current rapid rise of mobile computing, cloud computing, and social and collaborative learning is transforming education. In particular engineering education has and will continue benefiting from this trend by leading this transformation. To stimulate the innovative use of technology for a better teaching and learning experience, the Educational Technology and Academic Affairs offices have jointly developed and introduced an annual competition to further encourage faculty and technical staff to use the digital technologies in the classrooms. This annual competition provides a collaborative opportunity to prototype and assess the impact of emerging learning technologies and facilitate educational technology innovation. Texas A and M University Qatar campus is one of the six American university campuses established in the Education City, Doha, Qatar. Texas A and M University at Qatar campus currently offers four ABET accredited engineering degrees including Chemical, Electrical, Mechanical, and Petroleum and has proven itself as one of the leading academic institutions in the region. The major trust of Texas A&M University at Qatar is to develop, implement, and assess the most innovative use of digital technology to further assist students learning and to make the primary and supplementary course materials at students' disposal. The educational technology steered by instructional design enables educators to achieve learning objectives and develop interactive, engaging, and personalized learning experience. Educators and instructional designers bear a responsibility to meet the demand for the use of digital technologies in academia for improved learning outcomes. This paper summarizes some of the recent projects utilizing computer and digital technologies to aide engineering students' learnings and reports on achievements observed over the past two years. These projects demonstrate that technology has a positive effect not only on learning, but also on students' motivation, on the classroom atmosphere and on teachers' willingness to experiment with new and innovative instructional approaches. In sum, teaching with technology transforms the entire learning experience.