Parámetros de la Validación

Another perspective on the issue of labs and hands-on activities was not necessarily the technical or the experiential aspects, but rather the interactive component of the lab experience, and the perception that doing that online might be problematic. Six of the interviewees expressed some concern about interactivity related to labs, whether interactions between instructor and students regarding questions, problems, or guidance, or interactions between students in a team setting.

Two respondents described interactions with the students as an important aspect of pedagogy that they felt is lacking or more difficult in an online setting. One

undergraduate faculty member who had not taught online courses reported that interaction with students was important and described his concern with online courses, noting that teaching “is about making the class enjoyable and about interacting with the students, and so, I don’t have any particular desire really to do an online course.” A second undergraduate faculty member had a similar perspective, comparing face-to-face and online interactions, stating “now what I see when I teach, is I look at the students and I can get a sense of whether they are comprehending or not, and whether it seems like they are getting what I am saying…my thought is that you miss the interaction between the instructor and the students and I think that’s very valuable.”

Two interviewees that had not taught online concurred that student and instructor interaction in both the classroom and activities such as labs was a concern. “I just can’t do as good a job as I would like to with an online course. I really need the class in front of me and we need to have this interaction” stated one graduate level respondent. An undergraduate level instructor said “I have taught enough lab courses to know that you have got to have somebody there helping them out with problems or they get frustrated and they give up.” These comments expanded the issues with hands-on activities such as labs beyond just the technical aspects of replicating a real-world activity online. Rather, they approached it from the perspective of the need to create an online environment that facilitates interpersonal interaction. In contrast, no respondents that had taught an online course mentioned interaction between students and instructors, or any type of interaction, as a barrier to teaching online courses.

Several interviewees approached this issue from the perspective of trying to replicate a face-to-face lab experience in an online environment. An undergraduate instructor with no online experience stated that students are

inevitably going to run into trouble and you are going to need some help, and the best time to get that help is while you are sitting with a circuit in front of you that doesn’t work….So, these sort of interactive processes, at least at the moment, I don’t see how you are going to do that online.

A graduate professor with no online experience had a similar comment, noting that he thinks that “the team dynamic, working in a team, it’s better when you’re actually physically next to each other on your team because that’s what happens in the real world.” Another graduate professor with no online experience opined, “I think there’s a lot of learning that happens when you’re in a team environment or a group environment. And if you’re doing that all virtually, it’s more difficult, I think.” An undergraduate professor with some online experience put it in terms of richness of communication: “I suspect that the labs and the hands-on activities and the design projects – it’s the interaction and the lower bandwidth that you get when you go online as opposed to actually being in a room with someone. You have got incredibly high bandwidth there.”

However, not everyone agreed that the interaction and teamwork aspects were a problem. An undergraduate professor with no online experience stated it simply: “there is no reason that teams couldn’t, can’t work together online.” An undergraduate instructor with some online experience noted that “team type activities and kind of collaborative type stuff has changed a little bit. And that’s mostly because the students of today are much more comfortable using these tools.” A graduate professor with extensive online experience added “I mean, think about all of the social media things that are set up to enable people to communicate with each other instantly and so forth. I think that’s probably one that’s going to improve fairly quickly.”

In summary, in almost every case, respondents indicating that they had no direct experience with online learning rated the survey questions adversely to online learning

when compared to those that have taught at least one course online. These results include perceptions of online learning that are shown in the background research to not be the case – i.e. online learning outcomes can be comparable in online and face-to-face courses, teamwork can be effective in an online environment, online labs can be developed and delivered effectively, etc. Overall, whether an instructor has taught an engineering course online has a large and important impact on their perceptions of online learning and can be considered a critical factor related to the adoption and implementation of online engineering courses.