Online Learning Efficacy Research Database

The paper compares the effectiveness of in-person and virtual engineering laboratory sessions. The in-person and virtual laboratory sessions reported here comprise six experiments combined with short tutorials. The virtual lab combined enquiry-based learning and gamification principles. The integration of the virtual labs with in-person teaching created a blended learning environment. The effectiveness of this approach was assessed based on (i) the student feedback (i.e., a questionnaire with open-ended questions and Likert scale feedback), (ii) the students’ engagement with the virtual lab, and (iii) the impact on the academic performance (i.e., class test results). The students reported greater confidence in the understanding of theory in the virtual lab than the in-person lab. This is interesting given that the instruction for the virtual lab and the in-person lab of one experiment is identical (i.e., same instructor, same enquiry-based learning techniques, and same explanations). The students also appreciated the ability to complete the virtual lab anytime, anywhere, for as long as they needed, and highlighted the benefits of the interactivity. The median class test scores of the students who completed some or all the virtual lab experiments was higher than those who did not (83–89% vs. 67%). 
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Meeting global demand for growing the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce requires solutions for the shortage of qualified instructors. We propose and evaluate a model for scaling up affordable access to effective STEM education through national online education platforms. These platforms allow resource-constrained higher education institutions to adopt online courses produced by the country’s top universities and departments. A multisite randomized controlled trial tested this model with fully online and blended instruction modalities in Russia’s online education platform. We find that online and blended instruction produce similar student learning outcomes as traditional in-person instruction at substantially lower costs. Adopting this model at scale reduces faculty compensation costs that can fund increases in STEM enrollment. 
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Universities in the U.S. typically offer to teach introductory engineering courses in large classes to tackle the increase in undergraduate engineering enrolment and to save on cost of teaching. Previous studies done on traditionally taught large classes have shown the negative effects it has on students and faculty. Many institutions use online courses to teach these large classes due to the flexibility they provide students with in their schedule and pace of learning, as well as being less expensive for the university. This study aimed to investigate the effect of online pedagogy on the academic performance of students enrolled in mechanics of materials course taught at a U.S. Midwestern University. The findings of the study reveal that the online pedagogy had a negative effect on student academic performance when compared with the traditionally taught group. This was true for all demographics (gender, enrolment status, nationality) and categories (high, medium and low academic performance) of students except for high performing students for whom online pedagogy shows promise. 
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The benefits promoted by the use of the blended-learning model in higher education have been well studied from a general point of view, but no conclusive results have been achieved so far. However, within the field of engineering, these researches are quite scarce and become even rarer in the case of researches trying to demonstrate whether the benefits of blended learning could be compared to those achieved by classroom education. Learning platforms allow us to incorporate rich learning resources, interactive tools that foster collaborative learning, student to student, student to professor and student-professor-student interactions. Learning platforms also give us the opportunity of incorporating tasks that allow students to check the progress of their own learning processes. This paper presents the results of a research carried out at the School of Technical Architecture of the University of Seville with students enrolled in the Materials Science course. The aim of this investigation was to compare students’ results when trained by means of traditional teaching and blended learning. In order to achieve our goal we followed a quasi-experimental, descriptive and correlational design applied to two non-equivalent groups. The results indicated that in the blended-learning model, the students had more academic success as compared to traditional teaching. 
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Blended, flipped, and semi-flipped instructional approaches were used in various sections of a numerical methods course for undergraduate mechanical engineers. During the spring of 2014, a blended approach was used; in the summer of 2014, a combination of blended and flipped instruction was used to deliver a semi-flipped course; and in the fall of 2014, a fully-flipped approach was taken. Blended instruction aims to integrate technology-driven instruction with face-to-face learning and is often used to enhance the traditional lecture. With "flipped" instruction, students practice skills during class after viewing or/and reading lecture content beforehand. To directly assess these instructional methods, we compared multiple-choice and free response results from identical final exams. We did this for all students as well as demographic segments of interest to our research, including underrepresented minorities and transfer students. We uncovered several differences having medium to large effect sizes, suggesting that some degree of flipped instruction may have been more beneficial than blended learning for both lower and higher-order skills development. The students rated the classroom environment using Fraser's College and University Classroom Environment Inventory (CUCEI). The three classroom environments were statistically similar with small effect sizes. However, there was a trend in lower ratings for the flipped and semi-flipped classrooms versus the blended classroom across the various environmental dimensions. This may indicate that blended instruction had the most desirable classroom environment. Based on an evaluation survey, only 38% of respondents preferred flipped instruction to usual methods, although 54% preferred active learning to lecture. In an open-ended question, the most frequently-stated benefits of flipped instruction involved enhanced learning or learning processes, and engagement and professional behaviors. These results aligned with our focus group results. This study is believed to be one of the first to compare these three modalities in a STEM course. 
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The study is a quasi-experimental research which determines the success of hybrid method of teaching to an e-community of learners in cyberspace over the face to face method of teaching and tries to compare the academic performance of the students. Two groups of students are chosen, a control group and an experimental group. The traditional method of teaching is used in the control group and the hybrid method to an e-community of students is implemented in the experimental group. After the groups have been selected, an experimental variable is introduced to the experimental group only, leaving the control group as it was. After the experimental variable has been introduced, the researcher measured both groups on the dependent variable. With the creation of e-community in the cyberspace, student’s capacity is limited to the following: to upload, to read or download. While, the teachers can perform the read, delete, edit capacity in the system. The system (e-community/e-group) is available 24/7 in the internet so the students have unlimited access time to learning and they can do it anywhere, anytime. It's vitally important that teachers should keep/stay in touch online with their students as much as possible. This is to make their presence felt and to motivate student participation in the e-community. Teachers should set their limits clear from the outset. They should inform students to allow them reasonable number of hours for an online response to queries. 
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