Implementation and Assessment of a Blended Learning Environment as an Approach to Better Engage Students in a Large Systems Design Class

Reid Bailey, Michael Smith
2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings   unpublished
Mike Smith earned his B.S. and M.S. at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He has worked across a variety of application domains including manufacturing, transportation, defense, and health care. His 20+ years in the private sector and ten years in academia give him the combined perspective of academic rigor and pragmatic problem solving that helps bring solid solutions to challenging problems. Mr. Smith and his wife Amanda have four
more » ... and two grandchildren. He enjoys biking, hiking, camping, reading, and hanging out with the grandkids. Abstract Blended learning refers to combining traditional face-to-face learning environments with online education tools and approaches. With the ubiquitous use of laptops by students and the proliferation of low and no cost tools to facilitate online education, opportunities for blended learning are more available now than ever before. Additionally, many universities are facing growing enrollments that push the limits on the scalability of classroom pedagogies. For example, providing students the opportunity to orally present technical work becomes challenging as the number of students per class grows to large numbers. Furthermore, decades of prior research in education have shown the effectiveness of formative feedback and an authentic, active, and collaborative environment in promoting student learning. It is in this context that the authors redesigned a class to take advantage of several blended learning approaches in an effort to provide a higher quality learning environment. The assessment plan for this project is multidimensional and focuses on the effectiveness of the blended approaches in promoting quick formative feedback, active learning approaches, and collaborative learning ... all in an effort to improve student learning. To this end, evaluation will include an end-of-course survey aimed at collecting student perceptions of the different blended approaches, surveys of students related to self-efficacy and their perceptions of the feedback received on case studies, the matching of data on who watches online lectures to grades on specific assignments and questions, content analysis of course feedback as compared to prior years, and observations by instructors and teaching assistants. In this paper, the overall assessment approach is presented along with results from the end-of-course survey.
doi:10.18260/1-2--19706 fatcat:fbwebnh7wjd6zaoxrveqx5d4tu