Virtual Conference
July 26, 2021
July 26, 2021
July 19, 2022
Industrial Engineering
11
10.18260/1-2--37440
https://peer.asee.org/37440
323
Xiaomei Wang is a Post-doctoral Fellow and Assistant Lecturer in the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department of Texas A&M University. She received her PhD in Industrial Engineering from University at Buffalo. Her research interests are in cognitive engineering, machine learning, human decision-making, and healthcare.
Changwon Son is a PhD candidate in Wm Michael Barnes '64 Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University. He received his master's degree in safety engineering at Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center. Also, he worked for Hyundai Heavy Industries as a safety, health, and environment manager before coming back to a graduate school.
Dr. Farzan Sasangohar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University. Dr. Sasangohar's research interests are centered around understanding and improving human decision-making and performance in multi-task, safety-critical work environments using a wide range of analytical techniques and technological innovations such as remote continuous monitoring and connected integrated systems. He is interested and has experience in designing, implementing, and testing systems that improve human-systems performance in socio-technical domains such as healthcare, air-traffic control, command and control, process control, and surface transportation.
Jukrin Moon is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University. As part of her dissertation research, she investigates how crisis management teams cognitively function together as an integrated system. Overall, her research interests center around understanding interactions among humans, teams, and technologies, thereby better designing and managing the complex adaptive behaviors of safety-critical systems. She has been trained to be a human-systems engineer with her B.S. and M.S. from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in 2012 and 2014.
This paper discusses the challenges encountered and lessons learned from teaching various undergraduate and graduate-level industrial engineering courses during the COVID-19 pandemic. A large public university in Texas offered over 50% of Fall 2020 classes on a hybrid model. In this hybrid model, instructors provided face-to-face lectures to the students physically present in their classrooms while live-streaming and video-recording their lectures for both the synchronous and asynchronous delivery to the rest of the students. To accommodate different student needs and motivate student learning, instructors had to employ a mixture of instructional methods and adapt them flexibly. This paper aims to share experiences organizing the hybrid classes and lessons learned from such adaptations during COVID-19. The hybrid model posed some unique challenges for instructors concerning 1) the appropriate allocation of attention to both in-person and virtual classrooms as well as teaching materials, 2) the simultaneous management of questions asked in both classrooms, and 3) the multi-modal organization of in-class activities originally developed to be used only in the in-person classrooms. The hybrid model also inherited some prevalent challenges from distance learning for students concerning delayed feedback from instructors, difficulty concentrating on the course or taking quizzes and exams, insufficient interaction with peers and instructors, and technical issues. We learned the following lessons from the current hybrid class environments. Instructors need to 1) facilitate more frequent and informal communication to provide feedback; 2) establish virtual breakout rooms for small group discussion; 3) familiarize themselves with the technical tools for virtual exams through mock-up tests. In addition, several existing dilemmas were exacerbated with distance learning: 1) Providing detailed slides is beneficial for note-taking and review but may hurt motivation in attending the real-time lectures with decreased motivation in distance learning; 2) Highlight on the lecture or slides’ essence is beneficial in clarifying the learning objectives and preventing students from being overwhelmed. Still, it may also lead to skipping the “unimportant” parts if students watch the lecture’s video instead of attending real-time. We believe these challenges and adaptations would be generalizable to other institutions, as the persistent COVID-19 pandemic situation requires immediate and cross-institutional preparation efforts.
Wang, X., & Son, C., & Sasangohar, F., & Moon, J. (2021, July), Lessons Learned From Hybrid Face-to-Face and Virtual Teaching of Various Industrial Engineering Courses During the COVID-19 Pandemic Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--37440
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