Online teaching of engineering statistics: a comparative case study

• Autores: Can B. Aktas, Yıldırım Omurtag
• Localización: The International journal of engineering education, ISSN-e 0949-149X, Vol. 29, no. Extra 2, 2013, págs. 504-509
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Various forms of online education are rapidly gaining ground in higher education institutions. Engineering programs lag behind inonline education due to presumed difficulties associated with online lecturing of mathematics based courses. The goal of the studywas to investigate whether there was a significant difference in the mean grades of students enrolled in two sections of amathematics based Engineering Statistics course offered to undergraduate engineering students. While the course content covered inthe two sections was identical, the medium of teaching was different in the two sections: one section carried out a traditional in-class lecture style whereas the other section employed a partially-online type of teaching. Thus, the intention was to explore if thetwo lecturing styles were equally effective with regard to student learning or if one was better than the other. Results from twosections were compared by using statistical methods and hypothesis tests. Students in the two sections resulted in similar meanvalues for course credits completed and cumulative grade point average, indicating that there was not a significant differenceamong student bodies in the two sections. While the dispersion of grades in the partially-online section was higher compared withthe in-class lectured section, mean grades came out to be almost exactly the same, a result also supported by the hypothesis testconducted. Results indicate that there was not a significant difference in student grades, taken as indicative of their learning, whenthe two sections representing different styles of lecturing were compared. Results show promise with respect to the potential foronline teaching of Engineering Statistics courses, as well as other mathematics based engineering courses.