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Communication Tools for Engineering Educators Conducting Class Projects with Dispersed Students

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Conference

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Location

Virtual On line

Publication Date

June 22, 2020

Start Date

June 22, 2020

End Date

June 26, 2021

Conference Session

Teaching and Learning in Online Environments

Tagged Division

Educational Research and Methods

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

5

DOI

10.18260/1-2--34306

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/34306

Download Count

333

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Paper Authors

biography

Michael Roger Straus North Dakota State University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-7148-8280

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Michael Straus received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from North Dakota State University.

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biography

Stanley Shie Ng University of North Dakota Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-3021-8206

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Stanley Ng received his BS in Biomedical Engineering from University of California Irvine and MS in Biomedical Diagnostics from Arizona State University. Since then, he has been faculty of engineering at Biola University and currently serves as the Director of Engineering Programs. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Biomedical Engineering at University of North Dakota.

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Abstract

A major trend in education is integrating more online learning options for the changing student demographic. As more online communication tools are being developed, faculty are faced with the need to help students efficiently communicate throughout the course. For engineering faculty, group projects are common tasks assigned to students. However, with the growing demand for online learning environments, faculty are faced with student interaction challenges. Faculty rely on learning software to foster the educational growth of a student. The online classroom is faced with the challenge of promoting effective group work when student groups are unable to meet in a physical classroom. Distance and variation in student and instructor schedules can inhibit effective collaboration. Fortunately, software solutions have been developed to provide resources for distance collaboration for academia and enterprise, with some of that functionality found in online tools available to educators and students at no cost. This paper examines a list of tools and reviews their use in a geographically diverse collaborative project setting. A team of six engineering students in a combined Cardiovascular Engineering I course was selected by instruction team recommendation as a group with the greatest assumed barrier of communication. The level of education varied across the team with undergraduate and graduate students located across four states with limited in-person interaction. Post-project surveys were given to students to provide feedback and recommendations on tools that were used throughout the life of the project. This ongoing project serves as a testbed for collaboration between students over distance with the tools discovered, tested and made available to educators who wish to offer their distance education and non-local students the best opportunity for success in group projects.

Straus, M. R., & Ng, S. S. (2020, June), Communication Tools for Engineering Educators Conducting Class Projects with Dispersed Students Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--34306

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