Comparison of Engineering and Computer Science Student Performance and Opinions of Instruction of a Microcomputers Course Across Delivery Formats

Todd Jeffrey Freeborn

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: Innovative Strategies for Enhancing Engineering Education Across Diverse Learning Environments
Tagged Division: Electrical and Computer Engineering Division (ECE)
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/48485

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Paper Authors

biography

Todd Jeffrey Freeborn The University of Alabama orcid.org/0000-0001-9979-7301

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Todd Freeborn, PhD, is an associate professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Alabama. Through NSF funding, he has coordinated REU Sites for engineering students to explore renewable resources and speech pathology. He is also the coordinator for an NSF S-STEM program to prepare students for gateway courses across different disciplines of engineering to support and retain students in these disciplines. His research focuses on techniques to collect and analyze the electrical impedance of biological tissues and their potential applications.

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Abstract

The delivery format of college and university courses lies on a spectrum with live face-to-face at one end, asynchronous virtual delivery at the other, and all other hybrid formats between them. Each delivery format has different affordances, with asynchronous online lectures providing an opportunity for increased flexibility in accommodating students schedules and the ability to pause and rewatch lectures at their own pace. However, this format does not afford interactions between instructor and students afforded by live, face-to-face lectures which limits adapting a lesson to individual questions and student feedback in real-time. With a broad array of delivery formats available it is important to evaluate how student performance is impacted by the choice of format.

Since 2017 an undergraduate course on microcomputers at the University of Alabama has been delivered in live face-to-face (3 sections), online asynchronous (2 sections), and hybrid flipped-class (2 sections) formats by the same instructor. For the asynchronous iterations the content was delivered using pre-recorded virtual lectures, online homework / projects / exams, and students were provided support through weekly virtual office hours. Participation with lectures was a mandatory course element with weekly deadlines for each set of lectures. For the flipped-style iteration, the course content was again delivered using the same pre-recorded virtual lectures (also as a mandatory course element with weekly deadlines), online homework / projects / exams, but students were able to attend optional face-to-face work periods with the course instructor during the regularly scheduled lecture times.

This work will provide a quantitative analysis and comparison of student overall course performance (e.g. final grade) across modalities to evaluate differences. Further, student opinions of course instruction, which captured student feedback using both Likert-scale questions and open-ended equations, will be analyzed to evaluate differences based on delivery format. Additionally, lessons learned based on the delivery of this course using different formats will be provided. These details are expected to help other engineering educators in evaluating how delivery format may impact their own courses as they are designing new courses or revising existing courses.

Citation
Format

Freeborn, T. J. (2024, June), Comparison of Engineering and Computer Science Student Performance and Opinions of Instruction of a Microcomputers Course Across Delivery Formats Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/48485

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - The delivery format of college and university courses lies on a spectrum with live face-to-face at one end, asynchronous virtual delivery at the other, and all other hybrid formats between them.  Each delivery format has different affordances, with asynchronous online lectures providing an opportunity for increased flexibility in accommodating students schedules and the ability to pause and rewatch lectures at their own pace.  However, this format does not afford interactions between instructor and students afforded by live, face-to-face lectures which limits adapting a lesson to individual questions and student feedback in real-time.  With a broad array of delivery formats available it is important to evaluate how student performance is impacted by the choice of format. 

Since 2017 an undergraduate course on microcomputers at the University of Alabama has been delivered in live face-to-face (3 sections), online asynchronous (2 sections), and hybrid flipped-class (2 sections) formats by the same instructor.  For the asynchronous iterations the content was delivered using pre-recorded virtual lectures, online homework / projects / exams, and students were provided support through weekly virtual office hours.  Participation with lectures was a mandatory course element with weekly deadlines for each set of lectures. For the flipped-style iteration, the course content was again delivered using the same pre-recorded virtual lectures (also as a mandatory course element with weekly deadlines), online homework / projects / exams, but students were able to attend optional face-to-face work periods with the course instructor during the regularly scheduled lecture times.

This work will provide a quantitative analysis and comparison of student overall course performance (e.g. final grade) across modalities to evaluate differences.  Further, student opinions of course instruction, which captured student feedback using both Likert-scale questions and open-ended equations, will be analyzed to evaluate differences based on delivery format.  Additionally, lessons learned based on the delivery of this course using different formats will be provided.  These details are expected to help other engineering educators in evaluating how delivery format may impact their own courses as they are designing new courses or revising existing courses.
AU  - Todd Jeffrey Freeborn
CY  - Portland, Oregon
DA  - 2024/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Comparison of Engineering and Computer Science Student Performance and Opinions of Instruction of a Microcomputers Course Across Delivery Formats
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/48485
ER  -