Online Teaching Of "Energy & The Environment (original) (raw)
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2006 Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection (EGEE 102) course has been taught at Penn State since the fall of 2001. This course was selected by Penn State under the "Courseware Initiative" to be offered as an online course. To develop the online version of EGEE 102, the Energy and Geo Environmental Engineering (EGEE) Department, Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT), and the John A. Dutton e-Education Institute have collaborated to generate highly interactive, innovative learning objects. As a part of this endeavor, activities using Macromedia Flash were developed. The goal of these simulations is to engage students through student specific data enabled animations and enable students to learn concepts through automated interactivity. Interactivity involves online puzzles, drag and drop, fill in the blanks, problem solving with audio narrations, and online flash simulations to check and monitor the online learning. This course was taught online as a pilot version in spring of 2005 to 50 students. In fall of 2005 the course was subscribed by 350 students. This paper discusses the experience during the piloting phase and usefulness of different teaching and learning strategies. The strategies used for online class are 1) variation in instructional strategies, 2) visual reinforcements of students' attention and reinforce their learning, and 3) opportunities for students to provide personal insights and interpretations. This paper also discusses the student feedback and analysis of learning strategies used.
Student engagement in an online course and its impact on student success
2014
Angeles (2005-present) Taught face-to-face, hybrid, and online lower-and upper-division Geology, Natural Science, and First Year Seminar courses to a diverse student body. Designed curriculum and teaching material for lecture, lab, and activity. Created field guides for supervised field trips, mentored students in undergraduate research, developed rubrics for reports, and served on committees to improve student learning, and involved in research to stay current on best practices in the classroom.
Energy studies and the art of going online
1997
Offering interactive, multimedia courses via the Internet or CDROM is seen as one of the most promising ways of achieving the goals of cost effective, flexible, global education in a more competitive local and international student market. One of the major questions that still has to be answered, however, is whether interactive, online instructional methods can only be used to supplement traditional teaching practises, or whether they can effectively replace or even improve on them. This paper describes our experience in the design and development, so far, of the core units of a Postgraduate Diploma in Energy Studies to be offered by Murdoch University in the on-line delivery mode. This includes a discussion of some of the pedagogical and teaching/learning issues that needed to be addressed in developing such things as a common Web Browser interface and the way material is presented in an online, interactive mode. Some ideas of "What Works and Why", are given based on an e...
Impact Of Innovative And Highly Interactive Online Activities On Energy Efficiency Education
2005 Annual Conference Proceedings
Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection (EGEE 102) course has been taught at Penn State since the fall of 2001. Over the past seven semesters the enrollment has increased from 69 to 760. This course was selected by the University under the "Courseware" initiative to be offered as an online course. To develop the online version of EGEE 102, the Energy and Geo-environmental Engineering Department, the Teaching and Learning with Technology Unit of the University's Information Technology Services and the John A Dutton e-Education Institute have collaborated to generate highly interactive learning objects in an innovative manner. As a part of this endeavor, four home activities (simulations) using Macromedia Flash were developed. The goal of these simulations is to engage students through animations and enable students to calculate their energy consumption, analyze their energy consumption patterns and utility bills, understand the economics of insulation addition, and conduct an energy audit on a virtual home. Each of the students worked with a unique data set for each of these activities. The data sets for energy consumption of appliances or monthly energy bills for each student are generated using Perl scripts and are retained in the MySQL database. These student specific datasets are delivered through the Flash simulations. The students complete the required activity and submit their results via the Flash interface. The submitted values are automatically compared with the student-specific data sets and the correct numerical answers as calculated by the PHP script. This process minimizes the time required for the faculty to grade the reports, increased faculty efficiency, reduced grading errors, and counters plagiarism as duplicate submissions are ineffective. Informal student assessment indicated that the highly interactive Flash simulations were a motivational environment enabling comprehension of the cognitively challenging
Interactive learning in an urban environmental education online course
Online courses play an increasing role in professional development of environmental educators, yet little information is available on the interactive processes involved in online learning. We examined the relationship of three types of interactions in an urban environmental education online course – participant–participant, participant–instructor, and participant–content – to four course outcomes: participants’ motivation to learn, intent to adapt ideas and information learned through the course in their practice, actual adaptation of ideas in their practice, and development of professional networks. Content analysis was used to characterize participants’ and instructors’ weekly online posts and comments, and generalized estimation equation modeling was used to explore the relationships between interactions and outcomes. The results showed that participant–content interaction had significant positive relationships with participants’ motivation to learn, intent to adapt ideas, and adaptation of ideas. Participant–participant interaction had significant positive relationships with participants’ motivation to learn, and development of professional networks with each other. Finally, participant–instructor interaction had a significant positive relationship with participants’ development of professional networks. The results of this study can be used to improve professional development online courses for environmental educators.
asee.org
More and more often we learn of new courses or entire academic programs being brought online. While technologies have advanced in recent years, the question of how to blend computer technology with sound instructional design practices is very much alive and may be even more important when targeting content portability. This paper explores the challenges faced when using open-source applications to design, develop, and deploy the online component of an introductory course for the energy industry when the primary objectives are outreach, access, portability of content, and ease of future updates.
Environmental Design: Moving Toward Online Teaching That Encourages Action
Conference Proceedings
The internet not only has changed a vast spectrum of the world's operations, but also the ways teaching can deal with information and strategies for learning. While this trend has naturally led to the flexibility of time and location, it is crucial to focus on understanding effective pedagogical strategies with the use of this technology. This paper establishes the thesis that an online setting was effective in teaching both the fundamentals of regenerative studies, while focusing on how undergraduate students learned in this online learning setting. The online coursework and its challenges are discussed along with the structure and methods set to achieve the comprehension of the contents. The urgency for the search of a clear plan and actions to address climate change was the main goal of the class, which was explained in the current political and social context. Consecutively, critical topics of energy, water, shelter, and waste were explored individually, from the main challenges to the design solutions for regeneration. The paper also explains how surveys were a vital tool and an essential instance for feedback. Lessons learned from creating a virtual learning environment that allows for both the grasp of everyone's role in climate change and the generation of action/plans/solutions for regeneration are discussed, aiming to inform colleagues using a teaching tool that is here to stay.
Frontiers in Computer Science
A growing number of students are now opting for online classes. They find the traditional classroom modality restrictive, inflexible, and impractical. In this age of technological advancement, schools can now provide effective classroom teaching via the Web. This shift in pedagogical medium is forcing academic institutions to rethink how they want to deliver their course content. The overarching purpose of this research was to determine which teaching method proved more effective over the 8-year period. The scores of 548 students, 401 traditional students and 147 online students, in an environmental science class were used to determine which instructional modality generated better student performance. In addition to the overarching objective, we also examined score variabilities between genders and classifications to determine if teaching modality had a greater impact on specific groups. No significant difference in student performance between online and face-to-face (F2F) learners overall, with respect to gender, or with respect to class rank were found. These data demonstrate the ability to similarly translate environmental science concepts for non-STEM majors in both traditional and online platforms irrespective of gender or class rank. A potential exists for increasing the number of non-STEM majors engaged in citizen science using the flexibility of online learning to teach environmental science core concepts.
At James Cook University, a core first-year subject within the Bachelor of Education, Foundations of Sustainability in Education (FSE), sees students investigate the underlying science and complexity of socioecological challenges through inquiry, placebased learning, experimentation and consideration of classroom practice. Given that this subject is delivered across modes, a blended learning approach that encompasses an innovative use of learning technologies and careful consideration of pedagogy provides opportunity for both on-campus and online students to engage in active, learner-centred, collaborative, experiential and praxis oriented learning experiences (Wals & Jickling, 2002). In this paper, we draw upon Pittaway’s (2012) engagement framework and Herrington, Herrington, Oliver, Stoney and Willis’s (2001) guidelines for quality online courses to explore students’ perceptions and experiences of FSE. We investigate how a blended learning design can support the development of a robust foundational knowledge base in science and sustainability education, and engagement in active, experiential and praxis-oriented learning experiences for first year online students. This paper furthers the discussion around best pedagogical practice and blended learning design for science and sustainability education in online preservice teacher education, and in other disciplines in teacher education that call for hands-on learning experiences in an online environment.
2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings, 2012
He received his Ph.D. in Information Science and Learning Technologies from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He also holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering, an MBA degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia as well as a Ph.D. in Management from the University of Sibiu, Romania. Gelu has taught for more than 10 years in engineering, business and education and co-authored several books and book chapters. His research interests focus on causal reasoning and understanding, online learning, and cross disciplinary research at the confluence of learning, cognition and technology.