Creating and Facilitating Engaging, Rigorous Fully-Online Technical Courses (or just Online Content for Face-to-Face Courses) - an MEB Example

This paper addresses some common assumptions and concerns about, benefits of, and approaches to offering a rigorous technical course online. A systematic approach to convert each part of a typically face-to-face (F2F) course to an online equivalent or replacement is presented. Course elements such as cleverly designed discussion prompts, student-recorded problem explanations, and online assessments designed as described here may be used to increase student engagement, motivation, and content retention in any course. A fully-online Material and Energy Balances (MEB) course was offered at the Colorado School of Mines as the first online course offered from this institution’s Chemical and Biological Engineering department. With the help of the school’s teaching and learning center, the course was fully designed and built online before day 1 of its inaugural 8-week summer offering and was continuously facilitated by the instructor throughout the course. Of the 12 students who attempted the course, all of whom had earned a D, F or W in MEB at least once before, 10 passed with a Cor higher, one with a D, and one did not pass. This pass rate, along with quiz and exam averages and overall course GPA, were not statistically different than those for both a 15-week normal semester F2F and a 6-week summer F2F offering by the same instructor. Student evaluations and comments for the online course were strongly positive, even moreso than for F2F offerings in some ways. Moreover, student engagement, which may be assumed difficult to garner in online courses and is vital for success in Material and Energy Balances, was strikingly rich and fruitful in this online course. Methods used to get and keep students engaged in an online course are presented following motivations for offering core courses in summer and for offering them in an online format if possible, along with evidence of the success of the Online MEB course offering. Online tools and course elements presented here can also be used to enhance engagement in F2F courses and/or to create a hybrid (part F2F and part online) course.