Online Engineering Students’ Learning Strategies

Abstract

Online university students, unlike traditional face-to-face university students, are primarily adults: with very varied starting points, they deal with obtaining a degree and professional and family responsibilities. In this context, we aim to study the behaviour profile of the students in a preparatory mathematics course for engineering online studies through the completion level of the different proposed activities, especially the non-compulsory ones, and their relationship with the academic achievement in the subject. This research has been carried out according to a non-experimental design, with quantitative nature and framed within ex post facto studies, in 6 virtual classrooms with 340 students. A cluster analysis with K-means method provides three groups which, in turn, let us identify three student profiles: efficient, dedicated and passive. These profiles are comparable to previous findings regarding participation and behaviour patterns in participants in MOOCs with similar characteristics to the participants in the present study. The results of this study validate the fundamental role that time and evaluation design play in the students’ learning strategies and stimulate the redesign of the course, especially the activities oriented to better achievement of passive students.