Blended Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age of Core Engineering Courses
Raghu Echempati, Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Kettering University, Flint, MI (USA), and a
Fulbright Specialist at KMUTT, Thonburi Campus, Bangkok, TH
Abstract
In this presentation, experiences and lessons learned from the implementation of hybrid (blended) teaching/learning in core engineering courses is presented and discussed. These courses are in the mechanics stream of mechanical engineering. Blended teaching and learning in the digital age has much been discussed and also being practiced at several senior secondary schools, 2-year and 4-year degree colleges and in multiple disciplines with many positive experiences reported. What inhibits, if any, in continuing an implementation of this technique? Implementation of blended teaching and learning method has been attempted in two core courses. The first course is Statics and the second course is a follow on course on Mechanics of Materials. Both these courses are pre-requisites to two advanced level courses – Machine Design and Finite Element Analysis. These courses are taught at Kettering University, Flint, MI, which is a four-year ABET accredited private engineering college with special emphasis in Automotive program. The effectiveness of blended teaching technique is gaged by using Statics OLI modules that were developed as a part of on-going NSF-CCLI collaborative grant in which the author is one of the PIs. The overall student performance in the follow on courses as a result of using the Statics concepts modules is reported in this paper. Sample student survey is also conducted via e-mail to get their feedback. Some of the excerpts of this paper have been presented at ASEE 2013 Conference.
Introduction
A lot of research has been done in the field of blended teaching and learning. However, there is no general consensus as to what is blended learning and what it constitutes. Figure 1 [Wikipedia1] shows one method of blended learning that comprise the formal in person and/or classroom learning and online learning using a stationary computer or a mobile device such as a tablet or smart phone. This form of learning already exists for example in a social atmosphere such as finding a favorite restaurant in a new city and navigating ones way to reach that spot using the GPS. Many other terms such as web-based learning, e-learning, digital learning, hybrid learning, mixed-mode learning, etc are used to indicate a certain percentage of in person teaching with direct teacher-student interaction, and online learning, mainly involving the student to learn on his/her own with minimal or no monitoring by the instructor. The work done by Dziuban et al2 concludes that face-to-face meeting blended with online teaching provides an ideal teaching-learning atmosphere for both the teacher and the learner. This type of learning combines the “best of both worlds” allowing for both the social interaction specific to the
traditional classroom, as well as the effectiveness of a student-centered approach to learning.
Figure 1: Blended Learning Methodology1
Blended learning has been practiced in industries such as IBM who use short courses or webinars to update their employees’ current knowledge. Most of the time, the learners in this set up have experience and the maturity to learn material on their own. Usually they are not seeking to earn a degree although some may earn CEUs (continuing education units) for attending such professional courses. This group of audience is also highly motivated to learn because it is part of their job requirement to undergo periodic retraining for the growth of the company in which they work. Blended learning is, however, an evolving phenomenon in higher educational environment [Kadle3].
Figure 2 [Kadle3] shows the differentiation between formal to informal learning. While the former method is based solely on instructor-led training, in the blended classroom the instructor-led training has been reduced to only a few weeks mostly at the beginning of the semester.The blended classroom leverages a variety of technology resources such as streaming, chats, wikis, and blogs distributed across the entire spectrum from Formal to Collaborative to Informal Learning. Each of these resources is appropriate at a certain point in time; for example wikis are a useful tool especially in the first half of the semester, while mobile learning is utilized in the middle. User-generated content and individual blogs should feature prominently in a student-centered learning environment. Echempati and Sala4 presented some of their experiences of implementing blended teaching and learning at the 2013 ASEE Conference. The results although inconclusive, show an overall positive effect of using hybrid learning techniques to supplement student learning of basic core engineering courses that the authors attempted.
Blended Learning Methodology
Mobile Learning
Classroom Learning
Online Learning
Blended learning has been a part of curriculum at the master’s and doctorate levels in which the distance learning students watch the pre-recorded lecture DVDs (or streaming video files) of lectures.
Figure 2: Instructor-led program to a modern blended classroom3
Milne5 discusses how the physical space in which learning takes place influences learning in the virtual space (Figure 3). As schools continue to pursue blended learning there will be a need for iterative design and prototyping of these spaces to fulfill the needs of the learning process while maintaining flexibility and reducing cost (Figure 4). Collaboration between institutions and sharing of best practiceswill be very helpful in this regard.
Figure 3: The varied nature of blended learning environments5
Figure 4: A revised design process5
In a recent blog article published by The Hechinger Report (November 2013), one of the high schools in the Detroit area have been redesigning their classrooms and curriculum to promote student-centered learning via digital technology. This school comes under the Education Achievement Authority of Michigan, a statewide recovery district for schools consistently in the bottom five percent according to test scores. In other words, it’s a
failing school in a violent, poor, bankrupt city. But this fall, Campbell and his collaborators have used meager resources to construct a new approach to truly student-centered learning that is drawing interest and acclaim from educators and reformers all over the country. It goes by the acronym: The Preparatory Academy at Southeastern, or PASE. Students spend 5 to 6 hours a day doing various activities, including spending time in front of a computer watching and listening to the recorded class lectures that they didn’t understand during class hours. They move at their own pace towards mastery of each target material through a sequence of “learn, practice, apply, assess”.
Figure 5 shows the path to full blended-learning from a simple e-learning strategy as suggested by Dean6 from his several years of experience in practicing this methodology in developing several high school level courses. Allen et al7 and most recently, Pearson Learning Solutions conducted several studies on face-to-face, online and blended learning and concluded that most online students, like the overall student body, are overwhelmingly undergraduates; Online enrollments continue to grow, reaching 6.7 million for fall 2011; An increasing number of academic leaders say that offering online courses is critical to their institution's long-term strategy; and finally that a majority of academic leaders believe that the learning outcomes for online education are now equal to or superior to those for face-to-face instruction7. However, there is a decline in the number of faculty willing to instruct using online method.
In order for a course to be classified as blended, these studies assumed that 30% to 79% of the course delivery should be in the online from. Garrison and Vaughn8 explain how the traditional values of face-to-face teaching and the best practices of online learning can be integrated to achieve a blended learning environment. Means et al9 conducted studies under a grant from the U. S. Department of Education on how online learning immensely helps in better learning and understanding by the diverse student population that they studied compared to the traditional face-to-face teaching. Zhao et al10 support these findings with an understanding that online learning also depends on the type of learners some of whom may not succeed in courses taught solely online. There are quite a few other studies performed on blended learning that a reader can easily find using modern Internet resources.
Figure 5: The three phases about e-Learning6
Mechanics Stream of courses taught at Kettering University
The author attempted to integrate some hybrid learning in two core mechanical engineering course and in another mezzanine level course. Kettering University follows the quarter system calendar and requires all undergraduates to do co-op terms at an engineering industry. The two core courses where hybrid learning is integrated are Statics and introductory Solid Mechanics. The advanced level elective course was Applied Finite Element Analysis (FEA). This course is taught simultaneously to two groups of students. One is on campus (face-to-face) and the other group is completely online via distance learning (DISTLC) facility that the university provides to off campus students.
As a part of a collaborative NSF grant11 the author works with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to use Statics course modules developed by CMU. These course modules are open source and can be used by any learner or a teacher. However, in order to analyze the course outcomes (after taking the online quizzes), one has to register as a part of a course with CMU. In this set up, the students are assigned to read certain course modules on their own