Evaluating The Effectiveness And Use Of Cyber Learning Environments In Engineering Education: A Qualitative Analysis

Abstract

with a joint appointment in the Department of Engineering and Science Education and the School of Computing. Before his appointment at Clemson, he served as a Research Scientist in the Science Gateways Group at the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing, Information Technology at Purdue University where he led the education and the educational technology effort for the NSF-funded Network for Computational Nanotechnology (NCN). Dr. Madhavan was the Chair of the IEEE/ACM Supercomputing Education Program 2006 and was the curriculum director for the Supercomputing Education Program 2005. In January 2008, he was awarded the NSF CAREER for work on transforming engineering education through learner-centric, adaptive cyber-tools and cyber-environments. Jacob Schroeder, Clemson University Dr. Schroeder is a post-doctoral researcher at Clemson University. His work focuses on cyberinfrastructure in engineering education. He holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry Education from Iowa State University. Hanjun Xian, Clemson University Hanjun Xian is a Ph.D student working on issues of design of cyber-environments in engineering education at Clemson University.

Faculty Development Using Virtual Communities of Practice

“…A systematic survey of Journal of Engineering Education articles published from 1999 to 2008 found only three articles that dealt with student collaboration and communication over the Internet. 37 One study compared performance and satisfaction of face-to-face and virtual teams in a random control experiment in a graduate course on lean manufacturing. 70 The investigators reported similar performance on the project and in the group process patterns, but the face-toface teams were more satisfied with the experience.…”

Understanding the Engineering Education Research Problem Space Using Interactive Knowledge Networks

“…Instead of studying engineering education as a whole, some projects focused on a particular research topic. Madhavan et al 13 provided a synthesis of cyberlearning environments based on a qualitative analysis of articles in the Journal of Engineering Education between 2000 and 2009. Similarly, Prince 14 studied the effectiveness of active learning by synthesizing relevant literature, whereas Dutson et al investigated the topic of teaching engineering design 15 .…”

Interactive, Web-based Workshops on Educational Development Proposals and Projects

“…27 A systematic survey of Journal of Engineering Education articles published from 1999 to 2008 found only three articles that dealt with student collaboration and communication over the Internet. 17 One compared performance and satisfaction of face-to-face and virtual teams in a random control experiment in a graduate course on lean manufacturing. 26 The investigators reported similar performance on the project and in the group process patterns but the face-to-face teams were more satisfied with the experience.…”