Abstract:

As the COVID-19 pandemic spread in early 2020, universities across the globe pivoted to alternative approaches to instruction. At a numerous institutions in the United States, this occurred midway through the Spring semester, in March 2020. In engineering instruction in particular, many instructors found themselves rapidly pivoting to online instruction with a week or less to execute the change. Elements of this pivot to remote instruction persisted through the 2020-2021 school year.

At the Bucknell College of Engineering in the US, there were zero entirely online courses prior to March 2020 and only periodic guest lectures or other special events using remote lectures. The conversion from strictly in-person, to strictly online, to hybrid/mixed-mode occurred rapidly, often without much time for pre-planning. Even so, significant quantities of quality new instructional materials and new instructional practices were developed and implemented. Reflecting on those times and materials, it is easiest to see the negatives and what was lost in terms of student engagement relative to a 2019 baseline. The desire to return to “normal” instruction on the part of students, faculty, and administration focused on the modalities of 2019 as an ideal to be aspired to.

For the past three years I have talked with Engineering colleagues and students and sought the elements of emergency-remote-instruction that are worth keeping as we return to “normal” instruction. This poster captures the summary of my conversations about how we can improve our “normal” baseline by learning from and with the materials and practices developed through the most trying parts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Practices such as Zoom/remote office hours, office hours during non-business hours, video lectures, and bringing in more speakers through Zoom were all cited as positives that are worth keeping. Additional conversations revealed a preference for non-/minimally- participatory large meetings to be held in Zoom or with a Zoom option as well, while in-person events should focus on group sizes in which personal interactions are or can be important. This poster will go into further depth on these conversations and provide additional details on which elements of the positive remote learning practices were felt to be most helpful.

This is a revision of an abstract that was submitted and subsequently withdrawn (for travel reasons) for the 2023 conference.

Keywords:

Engineering, distance learning, flipped classroom.