Impact of COVID-19 on Engineering and Technology Course Outcomes

Sheikh Fahad Ferdous; M. Affan Badar; Maria Javaid

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Conference: 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
Location: Virtual Conference
Publication Date: July 26, 2021
Start Date: July 26, 2021
End Date: July 19, 2022
Conference Session: Remote Instruction/COVID-19 Strategies
Tagged Division: Engineering Technology
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 11
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--37277
Permanent URL: https://strategy.asee.org/37277
Download Count: 378

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M. Affan Badar, PhD is a Professor and former Chair in Applied Engineering & Technology Management Department at Indiana State University. In 2016-18 he was on leave and worked as Professor and Chair of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management at University of Sharjah (UAE). He received a Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering from University of Oklahoma, M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, and M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering and B.Sc. (Hons.) in Mechanical Engineering from Aligarh Muslim University. Dr. Badar has published more than 70 articles in refereed journals and proceedings in the areas of quality, reliability, coordinate metrology, engineering economy, etc.

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Maria Javaid Indiana State University orcid.org/0000-0002-7447-8424

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Dr. Maria Javaid joined Indiana State University in August 2019 as Assistant Professor. Before coming to ISU she was Assistant Professor at Jacksonville University. She received her PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Illinois at Chicago in 2014, where she was nominated as an exemplary teaching assistant by her department for three consecutive years.

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Abstract

A planned, organized, and resourceful environment is important for expected student learning outcomes. However, the student learning experience can be disrupted significantly if the plan of study changes suddenly like it did due to the Covid-19 global pandemic in March 2020. The purpose of this paper is to compare the situations of two courses’ outcomes such as student grades, number of students dropping the course, available resources, grading criteria, etc. before and during the pandemic. The compared two courses are from two separate departments where one course is Engineering Economics and another course is DC Circuits and Design. The course DC Circuits and Design has both theory and laboratory components. Engineering economics course was studied earlier by Alberts, Badar, & El-Mansour (2005) for engineering technology curriculum at Indiana State University. Now this course is taken by both engineering and engineering technology students. The course was offered in three sections in Spring 2019: two sections were taught in class (53 students) and another section via online (37 students). All the three sections were taught by the same instructor (Instructor 1). These sections were not hampered by any unwanted situations during the semester. In Spring 2020, four sections were offered: two on-campus sections with 16 and 32 students, and two online with 40 and 39 students. Two instructors: Instructor 1 and Instructor 2 taught the course. However, the world wide pandemic hit in the middle of the spring semester and all sections were changed to virtual mode. A comparison will be made between these two Spring semesters: 2019 and 2020 for this engineering economics course. In addition, we will compare the situation of a course that has laboratory component along with the theory component. It is an initial thought that the course with laboratory component may be affected more due to the pandemic situation. DC Circuits and Design course will fill this gap, i.e. to explore the effect of COVID-19 on a course with laboratory component. This course was taught by Author-2 in Fall 2019 to a class of 23 students. This section was not impacted by any unusual circumstances. During Fall 2020, two sections of this course one with 11 students and another one with 18 students are taught while maintaining the precautions for COVID-19. The purpose of this paper is to investigate if the sudden change of instruction mode due to the COVID-19 pandemic has any effect on the course outcomes. If there are any impacts, what we can do in the future in case of such sudden change to address these.

Citation
Format

Ferdous, S. F., & Badar, M. A., & Javaid, M. (2021, July), Impact of COVID-19 on Engineering and Technology Course Outcomes Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--37277

TY - CPAPER
AB - A planned, organized, and resourceful environment is important for expected student learning outcomes. However, the student learning experience can be disrupted significantly if the plan of study changes suddenly like it did due to the Covid-19 global pandemic in March 2020. The purpose of this paper is to compare the situations of two courses’ outcomes such as student grades, number of students dropping the course, available resources, grading criteria, etc. before and during the pandemic. The compared two courses are from two separate departments where one course is Engineering Economics and another course is DC Circuits and Design. The course DC Circuits and Design has both theory and laboratory components.
Engineering economics course was studied earlier by Alberts, Badar, &amp;amp; El-Mansour (2005) for engineering technology curriculum at Indiana State University. Now this course is taken by both engineering and engineering technology students. The course was offered in three sections in Spring 2019: two sections were taught in class (53 students) and another section via online (37 students). All the three sections were taught by the same instructor (Instructor 1). These sections were not hampered by any unwanted situations during the semester. In Spring 2020, four sections were offered: two on-campus sections with 16 and 32 students, and two online with 40 and 39 students. Two instructors: Instructor 1 and Instructor 2 taught the course. However, the world wide pandemic hit in the middle of the spring semester and all sections were changed to virtual mode. A comparison will be made between these two Spring semesters: 2019 and 2020 for this engineering economics course.
In addition, we will compare the situation of a course that has laboratory component along with the theory component. It is an initial thought that the course with laboratory component may be affected more due to the pandemic situation. DC Circuits and Design course will fill this gap, i.e. to explore the effect of COVID-19 on a course with laboratory component. This course was taught by Author-2 in Fall 2019 to a class of 23 students. This section was not impacted by any unusual circumstances. During Fall 2020, two sections of this course one with 11 students and another one with 18 students are taught while maintaining the precautions for COVID-19.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate if the sudden change of instruction mode due to the COVID-19 pandemic has any effect on the course outcomes. If there are any impacts, what we can do in the future in case of such sudden change to address these.

AU - Sheikh Fahad Ferdous
AU - M. Affan Badar
AU - Maria Javaid
CY - Virtual Conference
DA - 2021/07/26
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Impact of COVID-19 on Engineering and Technology Course Outcomes
UR - https://strategy.asee.org/37277
DO - 10.18260/1-2--37277
ER -