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Session Number 3241

Righting the Wrongs: Mistakes Made in the Virtual Classroom

Leslie J. Reynolds, Sheila R. Curl, Brent Mai, Alexius E. Smith Purdue University/Vanderbilt University

When teaching an electrical engineering technology course in the virtual classroom, instructional challenges are magnified in both course development and course delivery. Among these challenges are learning course management software, maximizing student motivation, enabling group learning and communication, and ensuring clarity of instructional materials and assignments. Although difficulties with many of the issues were anticipated during initial course development, experiencing them first-hand enabled us to identify their resolutions. Technology is developing at a rapid pace. In order to keep up with all the challenges these developments impose, it is essential that educators not only learn from their own mistakes, but that they share those experiences with colleagues and together advance the field of teaching. We will address problems encountered by both instructors and students and discuss how we improved our course delivery for subsequent semesters.

“As this century comes to an end…the defining characteristic of the current wave of technology is the role of information.” Alan Greenspan, 14 June 1999 testimony before the U.S. Congressional Joint Economic Committee.

What we teach in the virtual classroom

In recognition of the critical potential of new information technologies, Purdue’s Electrical Engineering Technology (EET) program asked the Purdue Libraries to develop a credit course that would teach the students how to effectively locate, evaluate and present information. The ability to identify one's information needs, find appropriate and reliable information, use it to solve problems and communicate the resulting knowledge to colleagues, employers and the world is the foundation for Information Strategies.

This course addresses the information literacy skills needed by students in the EET program and integrates directly into that course of study. Students learn about their professional literature, the importance of it, how to find it, evaluate it and use it. When Information Strategies is taken in proper sequence (in the third or fourth semester of the eight-semester curriculum), the students benefit because they can apply information skills in their upper level coursework. The course as designed and has been required in the EET curriculum and taught by the Libraries’ faculty since 1993.

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Curl, S. R., & Reynolds, L. J., & Mai, B. A., & Smith, A. E. (2000, June), Righting The Wrongs: Mistakes Made In The Virtual Classroom Paper presented at 2000 Annual Conference, St. Louis, Missouri. 10.18260/1-2--8672