Abstract:

Delivery of information technology and software development courses within typical computing or computer science programs at universities was commonly performed in a traditional face-to-face environment, within the computer classrooms or labs with the instructor being physically present and interactively helping students with the in-class assignments on their computers. In many cases, such in-person course delivery cannot be provided because students and instructors are physically separated and reside within different geographic locations in the same country or even globally. In the last decade, we are witnessing a rise of universities offering partially or entirely online programs with remotely delivered courses, and programs in computing with various software development courses are not an exception. In comparison with the traditional approach, there are significant differences in ways of delivery of such courses because they need to be supported by the modern technologies, which must provide various ways not only to teach the course, deliver course materials, gather students' results, and grade them, but even more to efficiently communicate with remote students and provide the high quality of education, regardless of a distance between them.

At two international campuses of our university located in two different cities in Croatia, for many years we are providing a distance delivery of several programming, information technology, and database-related courses within our Information Technology – Web and Mobile Computing program. Such courses are delivered in real time from one location to the other, with instructors being present at one campus while students residing at the other in the special computer lab with distance teaching equipment. Furthermore, some of our courses were delivered at both locations simultaneously in hybrid remote-and-local joint classes, and our capstone research course, the Senior Development Project, is introducing two additional locations, our main campus in the USA, and our international campus in the UAE, where instructors are delivering it jointly on three continents.

In this paper, we are presenting our challenges in providing remotely delivered courses by using various distance learning methods, technologies, services, and tools to provide an effective way to offer high-quality education, particularly when in-person instructions are not possible. Delivering technology-rich courses in computing involves many software development activities in class and outside of it, including intensive programming and database management assignments, as well as commonly engaging students in various group activities such as working on joint projects, and provides an additional set of challenges that needed to be addressed. Our intent is to present our experiences with distance delivery and technology-enhanced remote learning within our environment and based on our remote course delivery platform consisting of a video conferencing system, a course management system, and various online services and tools, required for software development and group projects. We are also discussing various usage scenarios and adaptions to particular courses, as well as its impact on the overall classroom learning experience based on students’ feedback, which was used as a basis for the remote course delivery improvements.

Keywords:

Distance Delivery, Remote Teaching, Technology-Enhanced Learning, Software Development.