Development of Assessment Plan for Online Thermo-Fluid Science Courses

Due to the flexibility and accessibility aspects, online learning is in high demand.  Many higher education institutions offer courses, certificates, and degree programs partially or fully online.  Educators have been redesigning their courses for the online learning environment.  Course management systems such as Blackboard, Moodle, and many others are adopted by higher education institutions to provide a platform to teach online courses. Transforming course contents from a traditional course to an online course can be challenging, as courses do have hands-on components such as laboratories, projects, and in-class exercises.  Many educators shared their experiences in designing and developing online courses and provided approaches they employed when transforming an in-class course to an online course. However, it is also important to measure the effectiveness of the online courses and determine the proper learning activities for the online environment. Although using only course grades to assess the effectiveness of online courses may be adequate, it may not necessarily provide an in-depth assessment of each chapter/topic. The authors suggest to collected and assessed homework and exam grades for both in-class and online settings over multiple semesters. This will help the instructors to identify the topics, chapters, or modules students may have difficulty in general. This paper provides the development of an assessment plan to measure the effectiveness of online Applied Fluid Mechanics and Applied Thermodynamics courses that are offered in the Mechanical Engineering Technology Department at Farmingdale State College. Keywords: Fluid Mechanics, Online Education, Thermodynamics, Thermo-Fluid Science

Student perceptions of remote learning transitions in engineering disciplines during the COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-national study

This study captures student perceptions of the effectiveness of remote learning and assessment in two associated engineering disciplines, mechanical and industrial, during the COVID-19 pandemic in a cross-national study. A structured questionnaire with 24 items on a 5-point Likert scale was used. Parallel and exploratory factor analyses identified three primary subscales. The links between student perceptions and assessment outcomes were also studied. There was a clear preference for face-to-face teaching, with the highest for laboratories. Remote live lectures were preferred over recorded. Although students found the switch to remote learning helpful, group work and communication were highlighted as concern areas. Mean scores on subscales indicate a low preference for remote learning (2.23), modest delivery effectiveness (3.05) and effective digital delivery tools (3.61). Gender effects were found significant on all subscales, along with significant interactions with university and year-group. Preference for remote delivery of design-based modules was significantly higher than others

A FRAMEWORK FOR SHARING ONLINE LABORATORY RESOURCES

ABSTRACT Numerous online laboratory resources have been and continue to be developed by many educational institutions around the world. These resources include both remote laboratories, which are based on actual experimental devices accessed remotely, as well as virtual laboratories, which represent software simulations of experiments. In the vast majority of the cases, the remotely accessible online laboratories reported on in the literature represent stand-alone systems, which are typically difficult to share by large numbers of learners dispersed at various educational institutions. This has led to the existence of many functionally similar, but independently operating systems developed in many places. This paper will identify the common features of such online laboratory resources. Then, the framework for a network of interconnected resource managers, which facilitate the efficient implementation and deployment of as well as the subsequent search for and shared usage of online laboratory resources (e.g. remote experiments, virtual experiments, game-based environments, etc.), will be presented. A centralized resource repository is presented that enables the publishing of information on the existence and availability of specific resources through the network. Finally, an example is given that illustrates the issues relating to joining, publishing, searching for and accessing online laboratory resources in that framework

Model Pembelajaran Kimia Fisika Berbasis Simulasi Dinamika Molekul

Fisika statistik merupakan bidang ilmu alam yang sangat penting dipahami oleh para mahasiswa fisika dan kimia. Bidang kajian fisika statistik termasuk bidang yang abstrak dan sulit dipahami sehingga memerlukan kemampuan analisis matematis yang tinggi. Pada penelitian ini telah dikembangkan sebuah model pembelajaran kimia - fisika berbasis simulasi dinamika molekul sehingga para mahasiswa yang memerlukan konsep-konsep fisika statistik dapat dipelajari dengan baik. Dengan simulasi dinamika molekul ini para mahasiswa dapat memahami perilaku sistem dalam berbagai jenis ensambel secara praktis dan efektif. Berbagai eksperimen yang seharusnya dilakukan dalam laboratorium, namun melalui model pembelajaran ini, kita dapat melakukan simulasi secara mandiri melalui tampilan di layar komputer sehingga dapat membantu pemahaman mahasiswa dengan lebih baik

SciTech News Volume 71, No. 1 (2017)

Columns and Reports From the Editor 3 Division News Science-Technology Division 5 Chemistry Division 8 Engineering Division Aerospace Section of the Engineering Division 9 Architecture, Building Engineering, Construction and Design Section of the Engineering Division 11 Reviews Sci-Tech Book News Reviews 12 Advertisements IEEE

The impact of online learning: mechanical engineering education perspectives

An emerging issue in both the mechanical engineering field and almost all other study disciplines is online learning. Many universities have changed their teaching strategies and are investing heavily in the online presentation of coursework without much investment dealing with lecturers. The migration from a traditional learning technique to online learning has grown rapidly over time. However, the problem is whether all students are ready for the transition from traditional face to face learning to online learning. This research explores the impact of an online learning approach within the mechanical engineering context. The focus of this study was to identify the improvement in the satisfaction, performance and self-confidence of the mechanical students in learning the Mechanical Engineering Design module using the online method. There are four stages involved in this research work. The first stage was problem discovery involving review of related literature and a preliminary study conducted to investigate the student experiences and teacher perceptions on the existing learning techniques for the mechanical design process. This preliminary study also aimed to identify the difficulties and problems faced by students that have resulted in the suggestion of a learning approach using computer technology. The second stage involved the designing and developing of a new prototype web-based learning system. A System Development Life Cycle model (SDLC) was applied comprising four phases of a concept, design, coding and testing. The third stage was the implementation and data collection. A main study was conducted with 160 mechanical engineering students from three different levels of study at one of the universities in Brunei Darussalam. Finally, the fourth stage was data analysis using SPSS statistical software. Based on the main findings, a significant difference was found between the experienced and inexperienced students in terms of their learning satisfaction in using online learning. Significant differences were also identified in terms of time taken between the experienced and inexperienced students when using traditional and online techniques of learning to solve the simple task. Additionally, the findings also indicated that there were significant differences among the experienced and inexperienced students in terms of marks performance in solving complex tasks using the online web-based learning system. The study has shown that the online learning approach is expected to be useful as an additional learning tool to the existing traditional learning technique, particularly in the context of engineering education

Cryptography Adapted to the New European Area of Higher Education

9 pages, no figures.-- Contributed to: Computational Science – ICCS 2008: 8th International Conference, Kraków, Poland, June 23-25, 2008, Proceedings, Part II.A new experience for teaching Cryptography to engineering students is shown. The aim is to give them a better understanding of secure and cryptographic algorithms by using Maple software, in a graduate-level course. In this paper we discuss how to structure, define, and implement a web-based course as a part of the traditional classes, according to the convergence of the European Higher Education Project. The proposed course facilitates the use of new Information and Communication Technologies.This work has been supported by Ministerio de Industria, Turismo y Comercio (Spain) in collaboration with Telef¶onica I+D (Project SEGUR@) with reference CENIT-2007 2004.Peer reviewe

Experts on e-learning: insights gained from listening to the student voice!

The Student Experience of e-Learning Laboratory (SEEL) project at the University of Greenwich was designed to explore and then implement a number of approaches to investigate learners’ experiences of using technology to support their learning. In this paper members of the SEEL team present initial findings from a University-wide survey of nearly a 1000 students. A selection of 90 ‘cameos’, drawn from the survey data, offer further insights into personal perceptions of e-learning and illustrate the diversity of students experiences. The cameos provide a more coherent picture of individual student experience based on the totality of each person’s responses to the questionnaire. Finally, extracts from follow-up case studies, based on interviews with a small number of students, allow us to ‘hear’ the student voice more clearly. Issues arising from an analysis of the data include student preferences for communication and social networking tools, views on the ‘smartness’ of their tutors’ uses of technology and perceptions of the value of e-learning. A primary finding and the focus of this paper, is that students effectively arrive at their own individualised selection, configuration and use of technologies and software that meets their perceived needs. This ‘personalisation’ does not imply that such configurations are the most efficient, nor does it automatically suggest that effective learning is occurring. SEEL reminds us that learners are individuals, who approach learning both with and without technology in their own distinctive ways. Hearing, understanding and responding to the student voice is fundamental in maximising learning effectiveness. Institutions should consider actively developing the capacity of academic staff to advise students on the usefulness of particular online tools and resources in support of learning and consider the potential benefits of building on what students already use in their everyday lives. Given the widespread perception that students tend to be ‘digital natives’ and academic staff ‘digital immigrants’ (Prensky, 2001), this could represent a considerable cultural challenge