Teaching a Fully Electronic Engineering Graduate Course: Methods, Results, and Resources

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Teaching a Fully Electronic Engineering Graduate
Course Methods, Results, and Resources

• Web-based Pedagogy

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• Overview of distance and electronic education
• State of the art
• EQE 693, via web-based pedagogy
• Results, student evaluations
• Resources Consumed
• Message for the future

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Distance Education
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Correspondence Courses

• By mail
• Correspondence Schools
• International Correspondence Schools (ICS) was
  founded in 1890.
• Engineering profession resisted
• 1950s none accredited

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• Accredited Schools
• Correspondence courses
• Independent Study
• Widely accepted
• Same faculty, standards.
• Video taped lectures
• Now the norm.

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Correspondence Today

• Low completion rates
• Exceptions
• CE 603
• Email perhaps
• Completely asynchronous

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Major Message

• Correspondence courses are inferior to in-class
  instruction
• Duhh.
• But can fill a niche

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Electronic Distance Education

• Televised Lectures, Live
• Electronic Classrooms
• Completely Synchronous

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Internet and Email

• Email
• Speed
• Cant Email video tapes
• Internet
• Streaming boundary values
• UW, Intellectual Property

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Minor Message

• The title distance education means many
  different things.
• Must distinguish what you mean
• Good Overview from the University of Idaho.
• Note many topics on left side of screen.

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Major Message

• Electronic Lectures are inferior to live
  lectures.
• Whether by
• Smart Classroom
• Internet

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State of the Art

• Conventional wisdom There are thousands of
  courses on the web
• Not!
• Need to explain two terms
• Electronic Course Management (ECM)
• Shovelware

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Electronic Course Management

• UAF uses Blackboard for ECM
• There are others.
• Heres a Blackboard site.
• ESM 450 Spring 01
• First four functions and dropbox and email.
• No different than what we have always done in the
  classroom.

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ECM

• Might save faculty time
• Might save paper
• Most UAF use is for on-campus students
• No real advantage over Email for distant
  students.
• (exceptions in a few minutes)

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Message

• Blackboard does nothing new towards education.
• Blackboard is not distance education.

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Shovelware

• Blackboard makes convenient the shoveling of
  documents onto a web site.
• But syllabi, notes, slides, etc., slide on to a
  web site by other means.
• Shovelware makes everyday class material
  available over the Internet.
• It is not a different form of education

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Message

• Most on-line courses are ECM and Shovelware.
• University of TEXAS.
• International Distance Learning .

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• One more thing web-based pedagogy is not
• Computer Based Training (CBT)

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Distance Ed., Computer

• Computer-Based Training (CBT). In CBT, the
  interaction is with the content embedded in the
  program, rather than with other people.
• CBT may take the form of tutorials, drills,
  quizzes, simulations or games. CBT is fine for
  self-study, but it doesn't have the powerful
  motivating aspect of human interaction (Walden)
• Frequently has rich media

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Message

• Add computer-based training to the list of things
  that (for college classes) are not as good as in
  the classroom.

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Whats really new?

• Not web-based pedagogy
• John Dewey, 1899
• Student learn by doing and by interacting with
  other students.

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• Web-based pedagogy is NOT an electronic lecture,
• Which is inferior (in most cases)
• What is web-based pedagogy, and
• Is it better than a lecture?

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Web-based pedagogy

• Old system
• Lecture is a teacher-centered strategy for
  presenting information
• Sage on the stage
• New system
• Facilitation requires the instructor to design
  activities that require student engagement in and
  processing of content that is available from
  on-line or off-line sources and that promote
  student interaction.
• Guide on the side

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Tools.

• Email facilitates interaction between students
  and instructor.
• Discussion forum (AKA bulletin board) allows for
  interaction between students.
• Real-time conferencing.
• Difficulties because it is synchronous

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EQE 693

• EQE 693, 2A, page 1.
• TRI is noted for homework
• See explanation of laws
• Also reference to more lengthy text
• For homework.
• (This is a website)

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Math Interaction

• Here is a site from ESM 450 with some web-based
  engineering economy lessons. They are still
  pretty rough, but you see the point.
• Module 4 and 8.

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Interaction with other students

• Use Blackboards discussion board
• Two groups
• EQE 693
• See Module 05

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Interaction with Instructor

• ParticipationHomework
• Must ask one question on the material
• Must give one comment on the course
• Examples
• Closure module
• Electronic quiz, automatic via Blackboard
• Assignments, via Dropbox

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Evaluations

• Homework
• Paper
• Reviewed by two other students
• Otherwise not different than in-class
• Take home exam
• Not different than in-class

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Summary

• Web-based Pedagogy teaches by interaction
• Student with computer
• Student with instructor
• Students with each other
• NOT by lecture.

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Perceived Quality

• Student evaluations
• IAS comment sheets

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Overall
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Differ by more than 0.2 or lt 4.0
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Relative to other college courses7much higher,
4 average
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Look at mode
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and all the children are above average.

• Difficult to do statistics with data
• Might say, Some evidence that the students
  perceived the quality as slightly better than
  similar courses, but that it was more work.
• Which is consistent with findings of others
• Could say, No evidence that the students
  perceived the quality as less than a similar
  course.

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Administration

• Gave a survey in week 4 about problems getting
  started.

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Demographics

• 4 students (3 Anchorage, 1 Juneau) did not come
  to Fairbanks in association with this course and
  that none of those had been registered at UAF the
  preceding semester.
• 3 students resided in the Fairbanks area and
  might have come to campus, but to my knowledge
  did not. One of those had been registered the
  semester before, the other two not.
• 4 of the 15 students would be especially
  vulnerable to administrative difficulties and 2
  or 3 more would be somewhat more vulnerable than
  the 7 who were on campus and registered for other
  courses.

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• 11 students (of 15) who lived in the Fairbanks
  area, queried if they could have taken this
  course as a classroom course,
• (1) "I could not have taken it because I travel a
  lot."
• (1) "I could not have take it because of other
  scheduling problems or commitments."
• (2) "I might have taken in the evening."
• (7) " I would have taken it in the evening."

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Blackboard

• 9 of the 15 said they had not used Blackboard or
  similar ECM tool before.
• 2 or 3 students reported problems with Blackboard
  and were unhappy with it 4 weeks into the course.
• These may or may not have been off-campus
  students.

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Administrative

• Several reported lengthy delays getting an Aurora
  account, which they need for Blackboard
• Two reported fee payment problems
• No problems with registration.

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Summary to this point

• Web-based pedagogy is not an electronic lecture.
• Web-based pedagogy delivered a graduate
  engineering course of sufficient quality.
• The offering disclosed no major administrative
  impediments to offer future courses to off-campus
  professionals.

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The other shoe drops

• Resources
• Computer hard and software
• Training
• Faculty time.

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Training

• Walden Certified On-line Instructor
• Summer 2000
• Useful, not required
• Blackboard
• HTML
• Some useful
• WYSIWYG
• Tutorial
• All done prior to start of EQE 693

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Hardware and Software

• UAF LAN is adequate
• 133 mHz Pentium I was not sufficient
• 32 megs of RAM
• Page mill was adequate
• Dreamweaver is better
• Typical hardware and common software is all that
  was needed.

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Wheres the shoe?
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Faculty time

• What it took me

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Time in Perspective

• 9 month contract 1500 hours
• 60 teaching 900 hours
• 4 courses 225 hours / course
• 15 weeks 15 hours / course-week
• EQE 693 took 13.8 for teaching
• EQE 693 took 23.1 for module preparation

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Preparation

• EQE 693 was prepared in Spring 99
• So the basic preparation time is not the hours
  above.
• Typically, it takes 3 or 4 hours per week to
  prepare for a class the second time it is taught.
• These would have to be added to the teaching
  hours for future classes.
• 13.8 3.5 17.3 more than 15, i.e., greater
  than standard class.

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Conclusion

• Using web-based pedagogy, the chief investment is
  faculty time to prepare the course.
• It required about one and half course loads to
  develop the learning modules for EQE 693
• It was one course load to teach
• Future classes will require some preparation

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• This is consistent with findings of others.

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Economics

• Incentive for UAF to pursue
• Quality may be somewhat better
• Not definite
• Seems to require more faculty time
• Incentive would be more students
• (There is much less competition than perceived)
• Extra students needed to amortize the investment
  in time would depend on number of times offered.
• Based on 15 students per on-campus class

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Marketing

• Cant compete against low-quality,
  ticket-punching, offerings
• Others target
• On-line doctorates
• Education, psychology
• Word of mouth