The Impact of COVID-19 in an online and on-campus Software Engineering program
- Conference
- Location
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Las Vegas, Nevada
- Publication Date
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April 18, 2024
- Start Date
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April 18, 2024
- End Date
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April 20, 2024
- Page Count
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2
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--46066
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/46066
- Download Count
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55
Paper Authors
Kevin A Gary
Arizona State University
orcid.org/0000-0003-0425-9928
Dr. Gary is an Associate Professor in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence at the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. His research interests are in agile and open-source software, software engineering in healthcare, and software engineering education. Presently he is focused on flow and quality metrics derived from agile research and applied to open-source software, and in identifying Regression Test Selection methods suitable for Agile and Lean software development.
He was a founding faculty member of the software engineering degree programs at ASU and developed the project-centric curricular implementation known as the Software Enterprise. He has served twice as program chair and led the program through multiple positive ABET accreditation visits. Kevin blends industry and academic experience to bring theoretically grounded, practice-oriented methods to the classroom.
Kevin is a member of ASEE, ACM, and IEEE.
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic raised fears of short and long-term consequences of effective learning from elementary school all the way through higher education. Students in all parts of the spectrum were required to learn online for as long as two years. One interesting question is whether students already accustomed to online learning were able to outperform students who were not. The objective of this paper is to present results of a recent ABET accreditation self-study and review process that compared online and on-campus cohorts across program outcomes (ABET outcomes plus custom outcomes) leading to interesting insights related to outcomes attainment data during the pandemic. The self-study for this review cycle occurred during the academic year 2020-21 when the University, like everyone, was utilizing various tools to continue its educational mission while conforming to health safety protocols. For on-campus students this meant a switch to online education for a period, then to mixed-mode (smaller in-person classes, synchronous broadcast via Zoom, alternating attendance days) delivery. For online students, there was no change in program delivery, as ASUOnline utilizes an asynchronous model using pre-recorded material with online forums, Slack, and Zoom. While all student, on-campus and online, encountered challenges that greatly affected learning, our analysis of outcomes data showed multiple outcomes were significantly impacted by COVID, and the impacts were heavily moderated by online versus on-campus modality. This paper will present the results of this analysis and discuss challenges tracking longer-term impacts.
Gary, K. A. (2024, April), The Impact of COVID-19 in an online and on-campus Software Engineering program Paper presented at 2024 ASEE PSW Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada. 10.18260/1-2--46066
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