Contextual variation on teachers’ conceptions of ICT-enhanced teaching in engineering education

Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 epidemic, higher education all over the world is increasingly reliant on the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), which creates several opportunities and problems, especially in the field of engineering education. One of the significant aspects that needs to be bought to the academic attention is how teachers' use of ICT in engineering education has been transformed due to this pandemic. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate views, and practices that define varying conceptions of engineering university teachers’ use of ICT in their teaching. Phenomenography, an emerging research approach in engineering education was used as a theoretical and methodological underpinning. A cohort of 14 teachers was selected from two universities in Bangladesh to participate in a semi-structured in-depth interview. The findings revealed five qualitatively different categories of description such as: imparting information, transmitting structured knowledge, offering guided learning, engaging students toward practice and engaging students toward innovation. Relationships among the categories of description revealed four dimensions of variation such as: purpose of using ICT in engineering teaching, role of a teacher, role of a student and TPACK components. The study further found that ICT-usage underpins teacher’s pedagogical approach to teaching engineering subjects and therefore provides useful information for university policy makers, teachers and curriculum designers toward quality teaching and learning. A quantitative investigation to determine the impact of the pedagogical approaches to teaching underpinned by ICT-use in engineering education is recommended.