Asee peer logo

Challenges and opportunities in online engineering education online

Download Paper |

Conference

2022 ASEE Zone IV Conference

Location

Vancouver

Publication Date

May 12, 2022

Start Date

May 12, 2022

End Date

May 14, 2022

Conference Session

Virtual Engineering

Tagged Topic

Conference Submission

Page Count

8

DOI

10.18260/1-2--44724

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/44724

Download Count

64

Request a correction

Paper Authors

biography

Mory Ghomshei

visit author page

Mory Ghomshei is a faculty member at School of Construction and Environment, at British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT), also an adjunct professor at University of British Columbia and McGill University. He is an international expert and consultant in energy sustainability.

visit author page

author page

Farzan Ghaffari P.Eng P.Eng. British Columbia Institute of Technology

author page

William Oching

Download Paper |

Abstract

Challenges and opportunities in online engineering education online Mory Ghomshei, Farzan Ghaffari, William Oching This abstract is intended to be followed by a full paper. Corvid-19 Pandemic was a turning point in post-secondary education. Engineering education was especially impacted by the Pandemic, due to its experimental and practical components which are often difficult, if not impossible, to be effectively and efficiently delivered online. While regular lectures and courses on numerical simulation can be delivered remotely, there are major challenges in online delivering of those course components which are related to physical experiments, laboratory simulation and field-scale collaborative work . Educational software and hardware related to Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are currently being used in most engineering programs. These tools are excellent in improving the students’ perception about real-case situations but cannot replace hands-on and group experiences. While online education during the Pandemic provided an opportunity to explore new frontiers in VR and AR technologies, a major challenge is to bridge between the VR and the field reality and person-to-person interaction. This paper discuses the importance of field and human components in engineering education and proposes solutions to reduce the negative impact of online education in engineering disciplines. One suggested strategy, in case of future pandemics, will be designing safe laboratory and field experiments to complement the remote education. This paper shares examples of successful cases of bridging between online and real-field experience in the mining engineering program at BCIT.

Ghomshei, M., & Ghaffari, F., & Oching, W. (2022, May), Challenges and opportunities in online engineering education online Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Zone IV Conference, Vancouver. 10.18260/1-2--44724

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2022 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015