부산대학교 도서관

Necessity is the parent of invention. Everyone in higher education experienced that proverb firsthand these past two years. Now, it is time to understand which of those inventions should live on and which will only be a footnote. Our need drove major educational redesign -- our need was the catalyst -- with online learning our only option, we developed new approaches to meet our students' learning, engagement, and retention needs. Project-based design courses were particularly challenging, owing to their specific mix of student collaboration and design-and-build pedagogy. This evidence-based practice paper investigates the pivot to the pandemic world of online-only availability and what can be retained from the experience to enhance student learning in future engineering education courses. First, it looks at the necessary changes to an experiential project-based inquiry course for first-year students. Second, this paper looks at the adaptations in a microcontroller-based first programming course with a final design project. Both courses are moderately large (~100-200 students/year) and are enrolled by a wide variety of science, engineering, and design majors at the University of Minnesota (a large public research university). Three key adaptations from these two courses show potentially lasting promise. The first is utilizing individual projects where students collaboratively support each other's projects (from ideation to implementation). The second is the use of static, responsive, and teleconference-based video submissions for project check-ins, reports, and design reviews. The final is using online communications tools, including Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and particularly the Discord service. Student ratings of teaching, comments, usage reports, and self-reflections are analyzed. While the data are far from conclusive due to pandemic impacts, they give us confidence that these changes helped students and faculty weather the pandemic storm and provide us with innovations that we can harness in a more normal environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]