What Do Undergraduate Engineering Students Think about Teaching and Learning Engineering Online?

As online learning has increasingly penetrated into more disciplines and become a new paradigm of education world-wide, engineering remains one of the disciplines with the lowest penetration rates in terms of number of online programs and online courses offered. In this study, we investigated this low penetration rate from undergraduate engineering students' perceptions and attitudes toward the feasibility of teaching and learning the discipline of engineering online. This study was part of a larger project that focused on developing innovative, instructional strategies assisted by computer technologies to promote students' learning of difficult engineering concepts. Results reported in this paper include students' favorable attitudes toward learning engineering through a blended (combining face-to-face and online learning) approach and their perspectives on the feasibility of teaching and learning engineering completely online. This study shed insight on the future of online engineering education as well as provided a discipline-based example for teaching and learning subject topics such as engineering and science online.