Blended Learning in Engineering Education

Recent Developments in Curriculum, Assessment and Practice

Ataur Rahman, Vojislav Ilic

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351677240
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Government & Business
• Index: Business

Blended Learning combines the conventional face-to-face course delivery with an online component. The synergetic effect of the two modalities has proved to be of superior didactic value to each modality on its own. The highly improved interaction it offers to students, as well as direct accessibility to the lecturer, adds to the hitherto unparalleled learning outcomes.

"Blended Learning in Engineering Education: Recent Developments in Curriculum, Assessment and Practice" highlights current trends in Engineering Education involving face-to-face and online curriculum delivery. This book will be especially useful to lecturers and postgraduate/undergraduate students as well as university administrators who would like to not only get an up-to-date overview of contemporary developments in this field, but also help enhance academic performance at all levels.

Chapter 1

Statistical hydrology teaching using a blended learning approach

A. Rahman¹, S. Kordrostami¹ and D. Purdy²

¹ School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, Western Sydney University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

² Blended Learning subject, Western Sydney University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

ABSTRACT: This chapter presents the delivery of an advanced statistical hydrology subject through the blended learning approach in Western Sydney University (WSU) as a part of the Master of Engineering degree. It has been found that blended learning is quite effective in delivering the contents of the subject to Master of Engineering students. The subject currently consists of a 5-hour face-to-face workshop and 11 pre-recorded tutorial sessions. The recorded tutorial sessions have been found to be the most useful element of this subject, as they have allowed a student to listen to the materials as many times as needed and at a time that is convenient to him/her. The preparation of a critical literature review has been found to be the most difficult task for the students. It has been found that a 5-hour workshop is inadequate to deliver the subject contents effectively to students, and hence it is proposed that a 2-hour lecture be delivered every week to answer students’ queries and facilitate face-to-face engagement among the students themselves, and between the students and lecturer, to enhance learning of this subject. Furthermore, an intra-session and end-of-semester examination are proposed to evaluate student learning in the subject. This will make the blended learning approach more effective for the students of the advanced statistical hydrology subject in WSU in future years.

1.1 Introduction

Water is the vital source of life on planet Earth, and the ever-increasing water demand and its intrinsic relationship with the environment have made water a subject of study in many disciplines of knowledge (Gleick, 1998; Grimmond, 2010). For civil and environmental engineering degrees, water-related subjects constitute a significant part of the degree. Topics generally include fluid mechanics, surface water hydrology, hydraulics, statistical hydrology, hydrogeology and water resources engineering. Hydrology is one of the most important water engineering subjects in civil and environmental engineering degrees all over the world (Kordrostami et al., 2016). Hydrology, a Greek word that means “science of water” (Raudkivi, 2013), is defined as “a branch of natural science concerned with occurrence, properties, distribution, and movement of water in the natural and man-made environment” (Elshorbagy, 2005).

Hydrology is linked with many different disciplines, and hence it has multiple dimensions of understanding (Vogel et al., 2015; Wagener et al., 2010). The conceptualization of hydrological processes requires higher-order reflective, metacognitive and critical thinking skills (Lenschow, 1998). Hydrologists in future decades must understand climate change impacts, human influences on the hydrologic cycle, the greater competition for water resources, complex water-sharing issues for international rivers, greater demand for environmental needs and water pollution issues. In this regard, uncertainty analysis is a vital task, and hence knowledge on statistical hydrology, which covers how uncertainty in the hydrological process modeling can be accounted for, is important for future hydrologists. Future hydrologists should be able to work across disciplines and geographic areas (Hooper, 2009; Torgersen, 2006). One of the major focuses of the hydrological society is to train and educate hydrologists to solve complex hydrological problems by having an interdisciplinary vision to the major hydrological issues (McGlynn et al., 2010). A greater emphasis has been placed on changing the perspectives of hydrology teaching from a traditional approach to one that caters to the contemporary, societal needs characterized by climate change, land use change, increased water demand and complex water governance issues (Uhlenbrook and Jong, 2012; Wagener et al., 2012). Future hydrologists should have a broad knowledge covering subjects such as fluid mechanics, physics, mathematics, ecology, geography, statistics, sociology and software engineering (Popescu et al., 2012).

Grasping the concept of hydrology appears to be a difficult task for numerous engineering students due to its empirical and conceptual nature. The qualitative and judgmental aspects of hydrological problems make it relatively difficult for engineering students who are used to solving problems using deterministic methods. It is essential for engineering students to comprehend the physics of hydrological processes before jumping into calculations (Raudkivi, 2013), which is not well appreciated by many students enrolled in engineering hydrology courses. The general difficulties in learning hydrology for civil engineers have been discussed by a number of previous researchers (e.g. Aghakouchak and Habib, 2010; Elshorbagy, 2005; Ngambeki et al., 2012).

Thompson et al. (2012) noted that hydrology teaching is dominated by a teacher-centered approach, mainly based on lectures, readings and assignments. Lecturers deliver the content and students take notes, read textbooks and lecture notes and apply the concepts through a series of exercises. Research suggests that a “chalk and talk” approach to education delivery is often ineffective in fully delivering the content (Thompson et al., 2012). On the other hand, student-centered approaches allow students to take more responsibility in their learning through the use of problem-based learning, project-based learning, inquiry-based learning, case-based learning and discovery learning (Herrington and Oliver, 2000). One of the limitations of student-centered approaches in engineering education is that it demands notable time to develop teaching materials such as interactive exercises and online assessments (Jiusto and DiBiasio, 2006; Prince and Felder, 2006).

It is important to understand the essential elements in education: the learner, the teacher, the syllabus, the teaching and learning method and the assessment method (Smith et al., 2005). The learners in hydrology should have a broad knowledge of science, mathematics, physics and statistics. The hydrology teachers should have expert knowledge plus the appropriate training to deliver the content of the subject. The syllabus should be updated in a timely manner to meet the emerging needs of the profession and society. The teaching method should be student-centered and assessments should be of a mixed type, i.e. it should not be based on examinations only, as is the case in many engineering universities in developing countries.

Blended learning is one of the most efficient learning strategies, as noted by the American Society for Training and Development, which rated it as one of the top 10 trends to emerge in the knowledge delivery industry (Bonk and Graham, 2012). Blended learning takes the strengths from both face-to-face and online learning experiences to form a unique learning experience, which leads to fulfilling the educational purposes and outcomes intended (Garrison and Vaughan, 2008). Blended learning is a holistic approach that involves rethinking and transforming teaching and learning (Garrison and Vaughan, 2008). Blended learning has evolved over the years since its inception. It has become cheaper and more readily available, and as a result has been adopted by many educators. Early use of technology in teaching can be traced back to mainframe computer-based training in the 1960s, with advances since then including video distance learning in the 1980s to CD-ROM resources in the 1990s and on to the early internet in the late 1990s (Bersin, 2004). Considerable improvements have been made to the infrastructure for the internet- and web-based technologies since their introduction into education, which has seen evolving technologies: audio, video, simulations and more (Bersin, 2004).

Over the last 10 years, substantial efforts have been made in integrating mobile computing into education, including laptops and tablets, coupled with the adoption of emerging web-based technologies, such as the introduction of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 tools and associated technologies. This has led to interactive and synchronous teaching activities. These technologies have helped teachers and instructors to easily develop online resources, which in the past would have been more difficult to produce. The online resources are often integrated into the learning management systems, computer software and tools available to educators in their institutions. In particular, the use of touch screens and screens with a digitizer that enables the user to draw on the screen with a stylus have enabled teachers to produce digital resources for students. The screen technology can distinguish between the stylus making contact on the screen and the user’s hand, thus enabling users to write and draw on the screen as they would on a piece of paper. This advancement allows educators to use these types of screens as a substitute to online hand-written notes or drawings, which pedagogically is a very low level use of the technology, but also to enhance the traditional online teaching resources by giving an oral explanation and demonstrating the process of problem solving.

Western Sydney University (WSU) has “blended learning staff” embedded in each of the schools across the university who specialize in developing and implementing educational strategies in collaboration with the academics. Within the School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics there is a blended learning team of six staff who provide this support, one of whom is the third author of this paper. Rahman (2017) and Rahman and Al-Amin (2014) adopted a blended learning approach to deliver a fluid mechanics subject at WSU. The method was extended to an advanced statistical hydrology subject at WSU as presented in this chapter.

Advanced statistical hydrology is one of the core subjects in the Masters of Engineering (civil and environmental) course at WSU. This subject covers the statistical methods applied to solve hydrological problems. This chapter discusses the opportunities and challenges faced by students and lecturers in the learning and teaching of advanced statistical hydrology through a blended learning approach.

The remainder of this chapter is organized as below. Section 1.2 presents an overview of the advanced statistical hydrology subject at WSU. Section 1.3 presents the perspectives of a student, who is the second author of this chapter. Section 1.4 presents the perspectives of the lecturer, who is the first author of this chapter. Section 1.5 presents the performance of students from the 2017 cohort. Section 1.6 presents further modifications of the subject based on students’ feedback. Section 1.7 presents a ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Editorial advisory board
• Reviewers
• 1 Statistical hydrology teaching using a blended learning approach
• 2 Blended learning: online and hands-on activities in an applied fluid flow course
• 3 Transitioning staff, students and course materials to blended and online learning environments
• 4 Impact of online quizzes on students’ results in a blended learning system of an Engineering subject
• 5 A connected e-learning framework for engineering education
• 6 The gamification of education: a case study in using positive psychology and game design to increase student engagement
• 7 Engineering education online: challenges, opportunities and solutions adopted in Australian, US and EU universities
• 8 Use of innovative technologies in enhancing students’ learning outcomes
• 9 Quality assessment of industrial design curriculum: discovering employability attributes from job advertisements
• 10 Blended learning in engineering education: students’ and lecturers’ perceptions and achieving learning outcomes
• 11 Evolution of Master of Engineering coursework degrees at Western Sydney University: past, present and future
• 12 Mastering mathematics in engineering by critically reading engineering texts
• 13 Curriculum development of a social hydrology course based on a blended learning approach
• 14 Teaching science to engineering students: application of student-centered and blended learning approaches
• 15 An analysis of the use of experiential learning principles for developing professional skills in postgraduate engineering students
• 16 Upgrading the Australian engineering curriculum to enhance communication skills of engineering students
• 17 Integration and adaptation of e-technology to deliver technical education in public and private universities of Bangladesh
• 18 Recent advances in the use of remote labs in fluid mechanics: a review
• 19 Technology-enhanced learning for civil engineering education: use of dynamic and virtual reality-based simulation, online data analysis and optimization tools
• Subject index