Lessons Learned Teaching Electrical Circuits Online

Abstract

Due to the increased demand for MOOCs, online, flipped, and hybrid courses, it is becoming more important to identify techniques to also teach engineering courses virtually without compromising standards. This paper will present a comparison of teaching an electric systems course for non-majors online and in a face to face classroom. It will provide a motivation for this transition and examine the related literature for teaching engineering courses online. It will also detail the challenges and lessons learned in transitioning an engineering course with an integral laboratory component to an online format. In order to measure the effectiveness of the new format, the assessment will examine student mastery of the course objectives as measured by several instruments including homework, exams, quizzes, and labs and course evaluations. There will also be qualitative data presented in the form of student evaluations and end of course surveys. Finally, based upon the results of the analysis recommendations will be provided for best practices in teaching circuits online.