Comparing Three Instructional Modes for an Engineering Economy Course

Abstract

This study compares three instructional modes in an “Engineering Economy” course: online, face-to-face (FtF), and flipped. Engineering Economy is a core course in this study and incorporates students with diverse backgrounds from different engineering majors. To discern the relation between student characteristics and teaching modality, an online questionnaire was designed for each mode and distributed over a two-year period. Data was collected and several statistical analyses were conducted to study the relationship between pedagogical delivery modes and various student-based factors such as gender, age, course load, living distance from campus, computer skills, work status, and first language. Students’ performance, persistence, and knowledge self-evaluation were also compared in different modes. The statistical analyses of data at 95% confidence level show that among all the factors, only the ratio of native English speakers, course load and work category differ significantly in different instructional modes. No statistically significant difference was observed between different modes for other factors.