Remote Practicals in the Time of Coronavirus, a Multidisciplinary Approach

Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, universities across the world have curtailed face to face teaching. Associated with this is the halt to the delivery of the practical experience required of engineering students. The Multidisciplinary Engineering Education (MEE) team at The University of Sheffield have responded to this in an efficient and effective way by recording the laboratory experiences and putting videos, quizzes and data online for students to engage with. The focus being on ensuring Learning Outcomes for modules and courses have been preserved. Naturally, practical skills cannot be easily provided using this approach, but it is an effective way of getting students to interact with real data, uncertainty and equipment which they cannot access directly .A number of short case studies from across the range of engineering are provided to inspire and guide other educators in how they can move experiments on line in an efficient and effective manner.No student feedback is available at the time of writing, but anecdotal evidence is that this approach is at least acceptable for students and a way of collecting this is suggested. The effort that has gone into this approach and the artefacts produced will support student learning after the initial disruption of the lockdown has passed.

Student Experiences of Practical Activities During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The COVID-19 pandemic has forced educators around the world to adjust their teaching techniques, to accommodate the strict social distancing measures required for in-person interaction, as well as completely redesigning some activities for remote delivery [1]. While some activities are easier to move to distance learning, such as lectures, teaching of practical engineering skills within the higher education sector is a great challenge under these circumstances [2], [3]. Particularly of concern is that students must still learn and demonstrate the "ability to apply relevant practical and laboratory skills", a requirement for Engineering Council accreditation [4].…”

Build It and They Will Come: Maintaining Students Access to Fabrication and Testing During a Pandemic

“…It also precludes group working. Another possibility was getting staff on site to do the work, similar to the approach in industry, such as in case study on pilot plant experiments in (Bangert et al, 2020). However, this would reduce the team working aspects of the project as only a few members would engage with the fabrication.…”

The Other Side of Black Screen: Rethinking Interaction in Synchronous Remote Learning for Collaborative Programming

“…As the pandemic hit, many universities were compelled to fast-track on this in-person to online transition process and adapt to available technology solutions. As an effort to prepare future remote instructors, researchers have surveyed and analyzed the experience of both instructors and students on this transition to identify challenges and design opportunities [1,3,9,14,15,17,45]. Like other disciplines, computer science courses also faced significant challenges to ensure quality delivery methods, performance evaluation, and classroom interaction to provide a learning experience that can elicit the positive aspects of an in-person learning environment [13].…”