Unified Methodologies, Formats and Outlines in Online Engineering Education

Abstract

Online education in engineering is developing as the communication technology advances. Although many online courses are being presented worldwide they have not been broadly accepted. For the online engineering education to be well successful and outperform traditional on-campus education, much has been done since ten years ago. To satisfy the five pillars in online education introduced by Sloan Consortium, there are still rooms for improvement[1]. Access, Learning effectiveness, student satisfaction, faculty satisfaction and cost effectiveness are the five metrics that drive investigations into online education. Problems related to “access” have been largely solved since the beginning of online technology era. Still, many substantive issues remain in gaining attention share and providing optimum modalities to specific classes of learners. Significant progress has also been made in “learning effectiveness”, however not much methodologies and guidelines have been developed to define outlines for transferring engineering text book into interactive/multimedia format featuring non-solitary, instructor-led activities with high communication attributes. Costs for creating and running online courses have plummeted over the decade and the average expense of online courses has decreased in recent years specially due to reducing the call on classroom space. This is a positive indication that online engineering education could potentially cost less than traditional on-campus education down the track. This research will shed light on online engineering education and will develop methodologies, formats and outlines with the aim of creating interactive online engineering courses. The methodologies and guidelines will be ideally covering all courses with general applicability and could be used as reference for all educational institutes that are keen to provide and develop online engineering education. This research will also define teaching methodologies in online engineering education that fit each course with less instructors’ influence and with consideration of specific classes of learners. The extent of instructors’ influence in online engineering education for each course will also be defined as part of this research. The outcome of this research will be used by engineering disciplines for implementation of online engineering education and to improve the efficiency of education.