Abstract:

The Covid-19 pandemic imposed the need to develop teaching material as well as the adjustment of didactical approaches in most college level courses due to the forced switch to online instruction. This work describes the multimedia and online resources developed during that period to support the teaching and learning activities of an Engineering Dynamics course of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Universidad de Antioquia in Colombia. These resources consist of videorecorded lectures and solutions to self-designed application problems, online simulations of relevant mechanical systems, and student assessment tools. In-person activities slowly started to resume as the health situation in the country improved and government directions allowed. However, the material continued in use and has been completely incorporated in the current offering of the course, allowing the instructor to implement active learning activities that were not applied in the pre-pandemic versions. The flipped classroom methodology is now used to cover the theoretical aspects, while the time in the classroom is spent on developing abilities to apply the concepts on relevant situations for mechanical engineers. Laboratory activities are carried out by means of the computer simulations developed for the course and made available online. The assessment tools include web-based tests and questionnaires that allow the instructor not only to grade learning, but also to identify challenging aspects for the students and skills development. A comparison of the performance of students in a pre-pandemic group, taught mainly through traditional lectures and some in-lab activities, and a post-pandemic group, using the statistical criterion of the effect size, shows that the material and methodology developed to cope with the challenges faced during the health crisis have improved the learning of current students, as measured by final grades, and also by developing desirable skills for engineering analysis and design. Therefore, the resources forcedly developed because of the Covid-19 crisis will continue to be used in the course; the results of their incorporation in the didactic activities have proved that these developments are valuable to improve the learning of dynamics in engineering students.

Keywords:

Engineering, education, post-COVID.