Strengthening the Community College Engineering Pipeline Using Tablet PCs and Online Instruction

Abstract

The California Community College system has been very successful in providing affordable and accessible education to diverse student populations by allowing them to complete all of their lower-division course work and then transfer to a four-year institution to complete a bachelor’s degree. Recent developments, however, have threatened the viability of engineering programs in California community colleges, endangering this very important pipeline in the engineering educational system. The increasing divergence of the lower-division requirements among different four-year institutions and among the different fields of engineering, coupled with the recent State budget crisis has forced many community colleges to cancel low-enrollment classes and high-cost programs including those in engineering. In response to this crisis, Canada College, a federally designated Hispanic-serving institution in the San Francisco Bay Area, has developed an innovative program entitled Online and Networked Education for Students in Transfer Engineering Programs (ONE-STEP). Funded by the National Science Foundation Engineering Education and Centers through the Innovation in Engineering Education and Curriculum, and Infrastructure (IEECI) program, ONE-STEP aims to improve community college engineering education through the use of Tablet-PC and wireless network technologies. The program includes a Summer Engineering Teaching Institute that will assist community college engineering faculty in developing a Tablet-PC-enhanced interactive model of engineering instruction, and implementing online courses using CCC Confer—a videoconferencing platform that is available free of charge to all faculty and staff of the California Community College system. ONE-STEP will also develop partnerships with community colleges currently without an engineering program to design and implement a Joint Engineering Program that is delivered through CCC Confer. This paper summarizes the results of the first year of implementation of the ONE-STEP program, and explores the program’s potential to strengthen community college engineering programs by increasing teaching efficiency and effectiveness with minimal additional costs.