Seminar Series I Beginning and Advanced Engineering Students’ Educational Experiences and Perceived Supports During COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The pandemic of COVID-19 is disrupting engineering education globally, at all levels of education. While distance education is nothing new, the pandemic of COVID-19 has forced instructors to rapidly move their courses online whether or not they’ve ever received training in online education. Engineering instructors, many of whom have courses with strong physical components, e.g., laboratory work, design projects, etc., are particularly challenged to think about how students can achieve those same learning goals through remote instruction. While the duration of the pandemic is unknown, it is becoming clear that what is happening right now will have long-term effectson many aspects of university operations. The mode a course is taught in does not determine the quality (whether in-person, synchronously online, or asynchronously), rather, quality is determined by several individual-level instructor choices regarding how to implement the course and align activities to learners’ needs and goals. Furthermore, students at different stages of their academic career require different levels of academic support. In this talk, Dr. Douglas will present results from surveys and interviews with beginning and advanced engineering students during the COVID-19 online instruction, regarding students’ experiences and perceived supports during COVID-19 online instruction. The students surveyed were enrolled in engineering or engineering technology courses with substantial team and project components. Dr. Douglas will provide implications of the results, including how instructors, instructional team members, advisors and engineering program staff can increase the quality of the student learning experience and support provided to different levels of students in online engineering courses. This research is in collaboration with Dr. Julie Martin of The Ohio State University and is funded by the National Science Foundation, NSF-2030133 & NSF-2030083.

Bio

Prof. Douglas is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Education at Purdue University. She earned her PhD in Educational Psychology, with an emphasis on evaluation and measurement in 2012. Her research has focused on topics of evaluation and assessment in engineering education, including research to develop an evaluation framework for online engineering courses and research to improve the fairness of assessments used in engineering education research. She recently received an NSF award to study engineering instructor decisions and student support during COVID-19. Her research on evaluation of online learning (supported by two NSF awards #1544259,1935683) has resulted in more than 20 peer-reviewed conference and journal publications related to engineering learners in online courses. She was a FutureLearn Research Fellow from 2017-2019; a 2018 recipient of the FIE New Faculty Fellow Award and is the 2021 Program Chair for the Educational Research Methods Division of ASEE.

About the EED Seminar Series

Registration is required prior to each seminar. AU20 seminars will take place via remote video conferencing. A link and password to each seminar will be sent once you register. Each seminar will be held live and will not be recorded for later playback. If you have questions regarding this seminar series, please contact Emily Dringenberg.