Abstract:

Many Universities globally are struggling with how to respond to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the education process. Most of the education systems recommended the switch to distance learning to protect the students and eliminate the virus spreading within the campuses. Consequently, students and course instructors faced several challenges during the past semester, especially in engineering courses that included laboratory hours, such as soil mechanics and many others. The design of such courses is mainly based on practical skills the student should learn at the end of the course. With that in mind, the results of the questionnaire addressed to students and faculty members showed that the traditional online tools were not efficient enough for teaching and leaning the practical subjects, and still, the in-person method is the most preferred technique by students. This paper presents a new teaching technique that may help in fulfilling this gap. The proposed method mainly depended on acting a delicate balance between the available interaction tools and the practical skill that must be gained through in-person applications in accordance with the health constrains. The suggested method has been examined with a student group sample, and the outcomes confirmed the validity and reliability of the proposed techniques.

Keywords:

COVID-19 Pandemic, Technology, Remote calculations, Standard Samples, Practical skills, Soil Testing, Geotechnical Engineering, Distance Learning.