scholarly journals Towards Simulation Aided Online Teaching: Material Design for Applied Fluid Mechanics

Author(s):  
Gonca Altuger-Genc ◽  
Yue Han ◽  
Yegin Genc

Learning is shifting from synchronous in-class settings to asynchronous online platforms in an attempt to make education accessible to wider audience. However, certain vital components of engineering education, such as laboratory work and hands-on practices, are harder to conduct online. Understanding how technology can help offering such components online can impact the quality of online education a great deal. The goal of this study is to improve the effectiveness of online courses in engineering. Particularly, we aim to transform some of the hands-on practices that are fundamental for engineering education into online setting. We first explored existing literature and found that real-time experimentation can be carried out with the help of online modules. We then designed two simulations for a fluid mechanics lab. We expect these simulations to be used to support teaching and evaluation of fluid mechanics through various assignments that utilize these simulations.  This study surveys how online modules have been studied in effort to relax the time and location constraints of in-class education. Drawing upon the literature review it proposes a novel approach to incorporate simulations to ground learning of abstract concepts such as buoyancy.

Author(s):  
Bibi Eshrat Zamani ◽  
Azam Esfijani ◽  
Sayed Majid Abdellahi Damaneh

Although higher education systems in developing countries such as Iran have embraced the online education approach, they are confronted with significant challenges in this transition, one of which is lack of instructors' participation in online teaching. Therefore, this research is aimed at exploring barriers and influential factors for this lack of participation. The researchers developed their theoretical framework based on a thorough review of the existing body of knowledge while considering the cultural features of Iran as a developing country. A tailored questionnaire asking about the existence of three groups of barriers, namely personal, attitudinal and contextual inhibitors, was distributed among all faculty members who were candidates for delivering online courses in one of the top universities in the country. Data was analysed using the descriptive and inferential tests of Friedman, <em>t</em>-Test and ANOVA. The results were in line with research findings in other developing countries in which the contextual barriers had the most inhibition effect against faculty members’ participation in online teaching. Certain cultural barriers also are highlighted by participants, pertaining to the context of Iranian online education systems.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. p30
Author(s):  
Liu Zhixuan

The outbreak of the COVID-19 caused many Chinese universities to initiate online teaching. This paper aimed to develop Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) practices in online courses to enable teachers and students in China to employ TBLT appropriately and effectively. This research made a case study which was conducted as an online English class with a total of 28 undergraduate students at a university in Guangdong, China. The findings show that the transition from the traditional classroom to online education was successful. This innovative teaching mode promotes students to become the initiator of learning. Besides, the switched roles between students and teachers, advantages as well as problems of this approach have been pointed out. This case study could provide pedagogical implicatures for online English teaching and learning practically and theoretically, which helps to develop new forms that could assist teachers and students to adopt TBLT in class.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. e0250041
Author(s):  
Shadnaz Asgari ◽  
Jelena Trajkovic ◽  
Mehran Rahmani ◽  
Wenlu Zhang ◽  
Roger C. Lo ◽  
...  

The COVID-19 pandemic compelled the global and abrupt conversion of conventional face-to-face instruction to the online format in many educational institutions. Urgent and careful planning is needed to mitigate negative effects of pandemic on engineering education that has been traditionally content-centered, hands-on and design-oriented. To enhance engineering online education during the pandemic, we conducted an observational study at California State University, Long Beach (one of the largest and most diverse four-year university in the U.S.). A total of 110 faculty members and 627 students from six engineering departments participated in surveys and answered quantitative and qualitative questions to highlight the challenges they experienced during the online instruction in Spring 2020. Our results identified various issues that negatively influenced the online engineering education including logistical/technical problems, learning/teaching challenges, privacy and security concerns and lack of sufficient hands-on training. For example, more than half of the students indicated lack of engagement in class, difficulty in maintaining their focus and Zoom fatigue after attending multiple online sessions. A correlation analysis showed that while semi-online asynchronous exams were associated with an increase in the perceived cheating by the instructors, a fully online or open-book/open-note exams had an association with a decrease in instructor’s perception of cheating. To address various identified challenges, we recommended strategies for educational stakeholders (students, faculty and administration) to fill the tools and technology gap and improve online engineering education. These recommendations are practical approaches for many similar institutions around the world and would help improve the learning outcomes of online educations in various engineering subfields. As the pandemic continues, sharing the results of this study with other educators can help with more effective planning and choice of best practices to enhance the efficacy of online engineering education during COVID-19 and post-pandemic.


Author(s):  
Julia Khanova

Online education is growing rapidly and outpacing research efforts in this area. Online teaching in particular has received little research attention. Grounded in existing literature and empirical research, this chapter aims to describe the key dimensions of the faculty experience of preparing and teaching online courses. The differences between online and traditional teaching are highlighted, emphasizing time/effort cost, technology and support needs, as well as the relationship between online teaching technology and pedagogy. The shift in faculty role is discussed. Special attention is given to using various Web resources for online teaching and the impact of this trend on library services. Real-life examples and direct quotes from faculty who teach online are used to illustrate each of the themes and suggest directions for future research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 125
Author(s):  
Osman Ferda Beytekin

The purpose of this qualitative study was to get a better understanding of faculty members&#39; views on the future of higher education by their first-time online teaching experiences during the Fall 2021 academic semester, which was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the outbreak&#39;s rapid and widespread dissemination, it created a unique phenomenon that had a significant impact on faculty members who had no prior experience teaching courses entirely online. In order to conduct this qualitative research, purposive sampling was used to choose ten faculty members from a variety of disciplines who had at least ten years of experience teaching in a traditional classroom setting at a public university in Izmir, Turkey. Faculty members were asked about the future of higher education in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Apart from that, each faculty member was asked to discuss how the mandatory shift to online education altered their teaching style and how institutional help impacted their experiences throughout the pandemic. As a consequence of their observations and statements of their perspectives on events they witnessed and personally experienced, the key issue of &quot;transformation of higher education with hybrid perspective&quot; developed as a central theme. The data analysis revealed the following subthemes: &quot;educators on the internet,&quot; &quot;sustain and evolve,&quot; and &quot;university support&quot;. These findings may be applied in a variety of contexts, including educational leadership and the design of hybrid and online courses, among other applications in higher education.


Author(s):  
Jennifer R. Banas ◽  
Angela Velez-Solic

There are many ways to deliver engaging, effective, and efficient online instruction, but most higher education instructors do not know how. So while the demand for online learning has drastically increased, the efficacious training of instructors into how to deliver online courses lags far behind. In this chapter, the authors demonstrate how adult learning and instructional design principles, coupled with known best practices for online teaching, can facilitate the design of effective training and professional development for online instructors. Case study examples are used to illustrate key concepts, and a sample outline for training is offered. Administrators and trainers of online instructors will form the primary audience; other stake holders in online education will benefit as well.


Author(s):  
Amir Salemi ◽  
Reza N. Jazar

Online education in engineering is developing as the communication technology advances. Although many online courses are being presented worldwide they have not been broadly accepted. For the online engineering education to be well successful and outperform traditional on-campus education, much has been done since ten years ago. To satisfy the five pillars in online education introduced by Sloan Consortium, there are still rooms for improvement[1]. Access, Learning effectiveness, student satisfaction, faculty satisfaction and cost effectiveness are the five metrics that drive investigations into online education. Problems related to “access” have been largely solved since the beginning of online technology era. Still, many substantive issues remain in gaining attention share and providing optimum modalities to specific classes of learners. Significant progress has also been made in “learning effectiveness”, however not much methodologies and guidelines have been developed to define outlines for transferring engineering text book into interactive/multimedia format featuring non-solitary, instructor-led activities with high communication attributes. Costs for creating and running online courses have plummeted over the decade and the average expense of online courses has decreased in recent years specially due to reducing the call on classroom space. This is a positive indication that online engineering education could potentially cost less than traditional on-campus education down the track. This research will shed light on online engineering education and will develop methodologies, formats and outlines with the aim of creating interactive online engineering courses. The methodologies and guidelines will be ideally covering all courses with general applicability and could be used as reference for all educational institutes that are keen to provide and develop online engineering education. This research will also define teaching methodologies in online engineering education that fit each course with less instructors’ influence and with consideration of specific classes of learners. The extent of instructors’ influence in online engineering education for each course will also be defined as part of this research. The outcome of this research will be used by engineering disciplines for implementation of online engineering education and to improve the efficiency of education.


2012 ◽  
Vol 239-240 ◽  
pp. 1637-1640
Author(s):  
Qi Jun Du

Based on the design theory of internet course teaching, combined with the course of operation system, some key technology has been introduced, such as the development process of teaching, network system, the curriculum and various network elements: learners, teaching objective, contents of teaching, learning environment, teaching strategies, evaluation, etc. Some construction of network course building should be noted, which all has strong and practical significance for others. With the rapid development of Internet and the gradual perfection of the modern education technology, the education philosophy and approaches have been keeping innovated. The Internet-based courses have aroused many people’s concern. Compared with traditional courses, it is much more flexible, efficient, interactive, and convenient. It can also meet the need of individual-tailored service. With regards to the target learners, forms of the contents, course arrangement and studying methods, online education is incomparably superior. Thus the application of online teaching is one of the most effective ways to improve the teaching level. Based on the online courses teaching design theories, combined with the course of the computer operation system, the paper introduces the key technologies related to online course design and development, which is suggestive to other online courses studies.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Stephen A Leybourne ◽  
Vijay Kanabar ◽  
Roger D.H. Warburton

  The evolution of the internet and collaboration tools have made it possible to enhance the range of online education, and make it universally accessible and eminently affordable. Around 2000, the faculty at Boston University’s Metropolitan College proposed an online master’s degree in project management, using the emerging learning management systems. The program grew quickly from 40 to 200 students, and was one of the first in the United States to be accredited by the Project Management Institute’s Global Accreditation Committee. This academic model has now been extended to other disciplines and programs.It was expected from the outset that the BU online and classroom academic experiences would be completely equivalent. This presented several challenges, the first of which was developing online equivalents for the face-to-face pedagogical course components. Second, writing online courses, recording videos and developing innovative discussion topics is time-consuming, and we quickly realised that only fulltime faculty had the commitment and motivation to devote the required effort to produce quality courses. Finally, the technological resources associated with course development and course operation required significant investment, beyond the faculty time, currently estimated at around $60,000 per course.We surveyed our students and alumni every two years and now have enough data to describe accurately the evolution in attitudes to online education.As one of the earlier and premier adopters of a rigorous academic online education model, BU has a vested interest to contribute to the growing debate about the academic quality and rigour of online education, the application of high pedagogical standards, and the innovative use of online teaching frameworks and tools. This paper will address and document these issues and assist in raising awareness of emerging “best practice” in the online education domain. 


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Fernandez

<p>This essay presents and discusses the developing role of virtual and augmented reality technologies in education. Addressing the challenges in adapting such technologies to focus on improving students’ learning outcomes, the author discusses the inclusion of experiential modes as a vehicle for improving students’ knowledge acquisition. Stakeholders in the educational role of technology include students, faculty members, institutions, and manufacturers. While the benefits of such technologies are still under investigation, the technology landscape offers opportunities to enhance face-to-face and online teaching, including contributions in the understanding of abstract concepts and training in real environments and situations. Barriers to technology use involve limited adoption of augmented and virtual reality technologies, and, more directly, necessary training of teachers in using such technologies within meaningful educational contexts. The author proposes a six-step methodology to aid adoption of these technologies as basic elements within the regular education: training teachers; developing conceptual prototypes; teamwork involving the teacher, a technical programmer, and an educational architect; and producing the experience, which then provides results in the subsequent two phases wherein teachers are trained to apply augmented- and virtual-reality solutions within their teaching methodology using an available subject-specific experience and then finally implementing the use of the experience in a regular subject with students. The essay concludes with discussion of the business opportunities facing virtual reality in face-to-face education as well as augmented and virtual reality in online education.</p>


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