Teaching graduate level acoustics courses to a blended enrollment of resident and distance education students

Abstract

The Graduate Program in Acoustics offers courses leading to the M.Eng. in Acoustics online through Penn State’s World Campus. The current method of course content delivery is to live-stream (with digital video archive) lectures to a blended student audience consisting of about 10-15 resident students physically present in the classroom and another 15-20 students at a distance who may be watching the class live, or who may be viewing the archived recording afterward. This paper will explore several issues involving the engagement of this blended audience of students. How does one encourage and enable students with a broad range of backgrounds, interests, and physical locations to engage with the topic material? How does one foster collaboration and interaction between distance students and the teacher and between resident and distance students? How does one manage office hours, help sessions, group projects, experiments, and student presentations for a blended student audience? Current practice and personal experiences from our faculty will be shared, and ideas from the audience will be welcomed.