Experiences in Collaborative Distributed Learning Across Geographies and Heterogeneous Student Populations in a Graduate Engineering Course

Abstract

This article discusses the use of distance learning technology to build an effective learning community across geographies and heterogeneous student populations. We contend that this is done most effectively by combining both synchronous and asynchronous methods. We describe our experience teaching a graduate course where we adopted an approach of strongly encouraging interaction during and after lecture and requiring students to collaborate in geographically dispersed groups, utilizing the appropriate technologies to enable this collaboration. The paper presents students’ reactions and lessons learned regarding the use of technology in course delivery and collaboration across geographies.