Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Yellamraju Vikas; Tony Ramanello; Kurt Gramoll

. Page 5.603.2The primary purpose of this paper will focus on examining all the different types of electronicmedia used in the Dynamics course. All of the electronic media was accessed through the mainDynamics course web page (Fig. 1) except the basic course theory and examples that were madeavailable separately on the course CD-ROM. This paper will give the reader a completeoverview of a typical online course used for students on and off the campus, without the optionof a classroom, and traditional teaching methods. The paper will address five main parts of theonline course and its content namely, lectures, discussion groups, online course management,quizzes, and homework. General course information, such as syllabus, is not discussed since it

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Albert L McHenry; Lakshmi Munukutla, Arizona State University

information about thecourse such as course description, prerequisites and times/locations. The StaffInformation button can be used to include instructor’s contact information or any otherstaff members such as teaching assistant or grader involved with the course is also postedfor students’ use. The Course Documents button leads to the area where the majority ofcourse information is located for the online course that will be delivered to the students.Primary contents imbedded into this area are course syllabus, handouts, lecture materialsand any other reading material related to the course. The Assignments button isdedicated to hold course assignments such as homework, tests and quizzes. TheCommunication button provides Blackboard communication tools

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Murali Krishnamurthi

run the gamut as shown in Figure 1 below from simple to complex, one-way tomulti-way interactions. Online courses can be partially online to fully online, thus requiring arange of interactions. Web Collaborative Video Resources Activities Conferencing Web Asynchronous Synchronous Simulated and Syllabus Discussions Discussions real-time control Figure 1. Range of possible interactions in an online courseThe dimensions of interactions may include students, instructors, practitioners, and technicalsupport staff. These may take the

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Patricia Backer

revised the coursesyllabus. The original content structure of the course is shown in Table 1. During thediscussions of the course by the faculty, there was a general consensus that the course contentwas too much. So, the content of the course was revised to reduce the number of units to six(see Table 2). After the course syllabus and content were determined, the development work Page 5.248.2began on the multimedia modules.Table 1. Original Content of the course, Technology and Civilization Unit Title 1 The nature of science and technology 2 Technology and work 3 Technology: Gender and cultural issues

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

David Harding

would be an important addition. This will be done during subsequentsemesters.Some of the course enhancements provided by WebCT were more or less standard. Course Page 5.274.2materials such as the syllabus, course objectives, answers to homework assignments and sampleshort answer questions were posted on separate pages which could be reached by links from theWebCT home page.Other course enhancements were made possible by the nature of the online medium. One of thesewas the delivery of quizzes in a very flexible way, which allowed for student self review andmastery learning. Quiz questions of several different categories are first written and

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Thomas E. Hulbert; Robert B. Angus

launched StanfordOnline. Today, the majority of classes that are offered via two-way video are also availableonline. The difference is that the two-way video courses are held at a specific time and beamedinto participating corporations' facilities, while the online courses are available anywhere,anytime…. Many engineering educators see the greatest growth of Web-based programsoccurring in continuing education rather than in degree programs, as more engineers feel theyhave to upgrade their skills …..Studies show that there is a large potential market for Web-basededucation. For example, when the Office of Continuing Engineering Education of the Universityof Illinois sent out a survey to people on its mailing list, it discovered that 88 percent of

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Julie E. Sharp

using e-mail to clarify assignments was enough, but a largemajority (87 percent) wanted both clarification and reminders.Much of the information students want in e-mail is already in the syllabus and course materials.Reading these materials and taking notes in class would seem to be sufficient, thus making e-mail unnecessary. Surprisingly, 84 percent recommended a weekly Sunday night messagealerting students to happenings and assignments in the upcoming week. This method may seemlike coddling. To clarify this point, I later added a statement in a brief addendum to thequestionnaire: “Sending reminders of assignments one or two days before they are due and aSunday night reminder of the upcoming week’s work is coddling students.” Sixty-nine

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Robert H. Mayer

presentations from local-area professionals. The course syllabus remained in a constantstate of flux as each succeeding class explored an ever-broadening range of topics. It soonbecame apparent that a single 3-credit course could not do justice to the breath of issues worthyof coverage.In academic year 1997, the “Environmental Issues” course was split into two course offerings,Ocean Environmental Engineering and Ocean Resources Engineering. These two foundationcourses now underlie the environmental option in the ocean engineering major. Well over 50%of our students select at least one of these courses as a major elective, and as many as 30% haveselected both. Further evidence of this keen interest in environmental engineering is theincreased

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Tze-Leong Yew; Kurt Gramoll

contains a combination ofdifferent media types. Figure 2 shows a sample of a homework assignment page. Homeworkassignments only concentrate on certain software tools, whereas the student projects at the end ofthe semester requires an integration of all the different tools learned during the semester. Bothhomework and student projects are submitted to a file server that is attached to the computernetwork in the College of Engineering. Course Syllabus Week Topic Software Assignment Week 1 Introduction, Multimedia Overview Multimedia Simulation, Containers, Web Week 2 Macromedia Director

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Geoffrey A. Wood

aproductive workday and not spend some amount of personal time absorbing new technology.Especially in the computer-related fields keeping up with changes and building new skills is afull time job on its own. Often the best way to pick up new skills is to take a class. Most collegesoffer graphic design classes as well as many vendors. Micron University offers a wideassortment of online courses that promise to take the student through various skill sets, many ofwhich are needed for multimedia design. At State Tech the MET/IET faculty and staff havebegun a combination of training initiatives that use focused in-house training where knowledgeexperts share their skills, and online training for broader, more generalized topics. Online coursesare chosen

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Hrishikesh Potdar; Kurt Gramoll

thisexamination. The afternoon session is a discipline specific examination where five disciplineschemical, electrical, industrial, mechanical and civil are covered. A general exam is alsoincluded for those students who do not fall in the five categories.5, 6 Most topics in the afternoonexam cover the third and fourth year of the engineering curriculum in that specific discipline.The initial phase of the FE online review project was concerned with developing web-basedsystem for the general morning exam session. The second phase of the project, which ispresented in this paper, deals with the continuation of the project and covers the afternoonsession for Industrial Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. There are numerous booksmanuals and video courses

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Karen Al-Ashkar

is the Internet, during the coursedevelopment and pilot-test phases of each course, an instructional designer worked withfaculty members to help choose any other media mix best suited for the course materials, Page 5.569.7as well as to assist in the identification realistic objectives for each course and thedevelopment of the syllabus and course timeline. The pilot testing also guaranteed thatwe were not overloading students schedules, that the time commitment we requestedfrom students was not only achievable, but realistic, and that the course content wasrelative to current and future practice.Faculty comfort In order to ensure that our faculty had

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Joseph H. Nevin; John L. Bellando

common to home, work and school environments, atrend is beginning that shifts the focus of learning. In the past, learning was a two-dimensionalprocess, involving text and pictures. With new multimedia and storage technology, manyinstructional lessons are being shifted to the three-dimensional realm of computer learning,utilizing not only text and graphics, but also video, audio, animation, and interactivity. Not onlydoes this technology allow for an enhanced learning environment, but also extends educationalopportunities to previously underserved populations. In fact, over the past several years, amagazine devoted to the discussion of enhancing the learning experience through multimediaand computer technology, Syllabus Magazine, has reached