Design Issues in a Cross‐institutional Collaboration on a Distance Education Course (original) (raw)
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Ordu University Journal of Science and Technology, 2021
Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, which was declared as a pandemic in 2020 by the World Health Organization, many educational institutions around the world started distance education. However, since distance education is an unusual field for the stakeholders of education, this sudden change created a chaos both for institutions in terms of providing the necessary infrastructure and for educators in terms of redesigning instruction techniques and tools. In this article, it is aimed to discuss a distance education course design proposal for basic design course, which is taught generally in the first two semesters within a studio environment at the department of architecture, through a) student opinions that were obtained through an online questionnaire that were conducted at the end of the semester, evaluations made by the authors about b) the process outputs and achievements and c) the tools. The results show that, the distance education course design proposal for the basic design course of the department of architecture, which requires collaboration and interaction between students and instructors, evaluated as being efficient both in terms of the tools and methods used and in terms of creating an online collaborative workspace.
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Successful collaborations are important to implementation of systemic reforms in undergraduate engineering education. Evidence for this exists with the formation of national coalitions of engineering programs and campus collaborations between professionals in engineering and education. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Oregon State University has worked in collaboration with university science education researchers to implement large-scale curriculum reform based on a platform for learning. This collaboration between engineers and educators has been enhanced through the use of an emerging educational research paradigm called design research. Design research uses a team to manage a series of iterative cycles of educational design, implementation, and evaluation. Each cycle provides the empirical evidence needed to improve instruction, and refine educational theory. Data is gathered within the context of an authentic complex educational setting enhancing its explanatory power over data gathered through more traditional methods of educational research and evaluation. Educational design research has proven to be particularly effective at OSU since it provides a common point of reference for discussions about education between engineers and education researchers. This paper summarizes the design research process as it is used at OSU to reform engineering education. The paper points out the parallels between this method of educational research and engineering design that have enhanced this campus collaboration. Design research and the specific illustrations of its use in engineering education reform at OSU provide additional tools for reforming higher education and, in particular, engineering programs at other universities. Complexity and Collaboration in Reform Proposals for reform in undergraduate science and engineering education during the last three decades are common. Yet, undergraduate education looks very much the same today as it did prior to reform agendas. This is not to say that change is non-existent. The published literature describes new instructional techniques or assessment adopted by individual faculty, a small team, or even a multiple institution consortium. Entire courses or degree programs are frequently developed to accommodate proposed reform. However, even when backed by NSF funding, these reforms have proven difficult to institutionalize and disseminate beyond pilot projects. 1 At issue with reform and its dissemination is a tension between the complexity of an educational problem and the desire for simplicity in a solution. A study of curriculum reform in the Page 9.562.1