Successful On Line Delivery Of Industrial Engineering Courses

This paper describes the web-based, asynchronous delivery of two industrial engineering courses, Industrial Safety and Human Factors in Engineering. These courses were developed and are taught using Blackboard by faculty of the University of Tennessee at Martin’s Engineering Department for the University of Tennessee New College. Web-based instruction that combines homework, tests/quizzes, and discussion topics to successfully teach these two courses is described. Examples of the various evaluative instruments are presented along with a discussion of some of the practical issues associated with creating and maintaining this particular instructional delivery system. A brief background on the development of the courses is presented along with a sampling of comments from student evaluations of the courses. Background The Bachelor of University Studies (BUS) degree originally was offered as an area of concentration within the University of Tennessee at Martin’s School of Arts and Sciences. As a result of reorganization of the academic units in 2000, this program was developed into an independent degree program under the direction of the Assistant Vice-Chancellor of Academic Affairs. The BUS is an individualized degree program. It was created to meet the needs of the non-traditional student and others whose educational objectives were not met by traditional degree programs. The degree was approved by the Faculty Senate in Spring 2000 and implemented in the fall of that year. Concurrently, The University of Tennessee (UT) System offered The University of Tennessee at Martin (UTM) the opportunity to provide the initial degree program through UT New College. The BUS degree was selected as the means through which the UT New College could begin offering bachelor’s degrees off-campus to students at convenient times and places. Because of the low number of Tennesseans holding a post secondary degree and a new emphasis placed on higher education degrees by the state, the primary focus of the UT New College was to help Tennessee citizens complete a college degree. The New College Committee, consisting of a group of UTM faculty and administrators, was appointed and directed to develop an implementation plan to offer BUS courses via the Internet. The committee was also charged with developing a budget and a selection process for the initial on-line courses to be offered in Fall 2001. The UT System provided funding for the development of 10 courses each year for three years--a total of 30 courses. A faculty member was to be paid $8,000 to develop a course, $4,000 at the P ge 10174.1 “Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright© 2005, American Society for Engineering Education” end of the summer months (course development and Blackboard training took place in the summer), and an additional $4,000 at the end of the first month of the first semester the course was offered. Courses were to be taught in-load unless the faculty member's department could not provide release time for the course. If no release time was available, the course would be taught as over-load assignments with funds provided by New College. Working together, the UT System and the New College Office developed a survey to determine the courses and areas of interest that the target market of prospective on-line students expected and desired in Internet course offerings. This survey indicated the students’ primary interests were in business, computers and information systems, and human resource development courses. The survey results were interpreted to include courses that supported these primary areas. The New College Committee requested proposals from all UTM faculty for classes to be delivered via the Internet. Compared to development of conventional courses, these courses imposed two different policies on the faculty member: 1) faculty members would be paid to develop these courses, and 2) the University would own the courses after completion of development. These courses would normally be taught in-load and technical support would be supplied to the faculty to develop the online segments of the courses. The UT System specified three requirements for the courses: 1) they would be offered in an asynchronous environment, 2) the courses would not be new courses, but they would currently exist, and 3) the courses would be limited to 300and 400-level courses. Additionally, in order to reduce the tendency to draw students from existing on-campus courses, the on-line classes would be restricted to students that were not currently enrolled on campus. The on-line courses were intended to develop new markets for UTM and create new enrollments. Eventually, on-campus students were allowed to enroll in the classes, but they were charged tuition even if the student previously paid full-time tuition for that semester. Courses from all colleges across the UTM campus were received. The New College Committee first removed those courses that did not meet the requirements of the New College funding. Next, the courses were ranked relative to the ability of each class to meet the needs of the target market. The top 10 courses were then selected for development during the summer of 2001 for delivery during the fall semester. Two courses have been developed by the UTM Department of Engineering. Industrial Engineering 402, Industrial Safety, was submitted and approved in the first group of 10 courses. Dr. Robert LeMaster developed the course and taught it through the Fall 2002. Engineering 381, Human Factors in Engineering, was developed in the third and final group of 10 courses. Professor Edward Wheeler developed the course, continues to teach it, and has taken over the Safety course. Both courses have been taught in each regular semester since their development. The students attracted to the BUS degree are typically non-traditional students who have some college credits and need a flexible program to complete the bachelor’s degree. Students interested in management, work place safety, or both typically have enrolled in these two courses. No engineering major has every enrolled in either of the courses. An interesting note one student that completed the two courses became so interested in engineering that she has P ge 10174.2 “Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright© 2005, American Society for Engineering Education” enrolled in an on-line, engineering management, graduate degree program offered by New College. Developing the Courses When developing these courses for on-line presentation, the biggest challenge was to present a meaningful course that contained the topics and elements traditionally found in a safety or human factors course. Very few, if any, of the students that enroll in these courses have any background or credits in engineering. Another challenge was to maintain the rigor associated with these courses and still be able to provide a meaningful learning experience for the typical non-engineering student. Even though the courses were developed independently and three years apart, the same objectives were used to develop both courses. The most important objective was not only to present a course that was rigorous, but also not to overwhelm the non-engineering student. Additional objectives were to give the students experiences that would be meaningful to their life situations, be easily delivered on-line, and be accommodated in a 15-week semester. One of the biggest challenges in the development of both courses was the choice of an appropriate textbook. The choice for the safety course was not very difficult. Hammer and Price’s Occupational Safety Management and Engineering was chosen for the course because it is relatively easy to read, covers the required material, and contains 29 chapters. The number of chapters makes for easy pacing of the course over the 15-week semester. Choosing a text for the human factors course was more difficult. Wickens’ Introduction to Human Factors and Kroemer’s Ergonomics were both considered for use in the course. Without the classroom lecture time to explain the material as presented in these texts, each of them was determine to be too difficult for on-line use. Pulat’s Fundamentals of Industrial Ergonomics was found to be an acceptable text. It is relatively easy to read and understand and is fairly comprehensive. A couple of drawbacks to using the text are its age and, in some areas, it’s lack of depth. Pacing in the course was also an issue with this text. The appropriate chapters to assign on-line were determined by the typical coverage in an on-campus class-not all chapters in the text are used. The usual forms of evaluations used in the classroom setting are available on Blackboard. Quizzes/tests can be composed of multiple choice, multiple answer, true/false, matching, or short answer questions. The computer does the grading of objective questions; however, the instructor must grade subjective questions. In both courses, a quiz/test was developed for each chapter. The safety course does not use time limits on the quizzes, although the mid-term and final are timed examinations. Each quiz/test in the human factors course is timed. In the safety course, two chapters are assigned each week (with the exception of the last week when three must be assigned). The additional week is used for a mid-term examination. Associated with each chapter is a short quiz, usually eight to eighteen points in value. Each week the students receive immediate feedback with the automatic grading provided by Blackboard. Making assignments in the human factors course was more difficult. Twelve of the book’s 14 chapters are covered in the course. Most weeks, a single chapter is assigned with an associated quiz/test. Chapters dealing with physical ergonomics and industrial safety are assigned over two-week periods. There is no m