Student Perceptions on the Use of New Techonologies in Engineering Courses Recorded Lectures on the Internet and Moodle

IIT Bombay (IITB) has been transmitting some of its courses as part of its distance education initiative, coordinated by the Centre for Distance Engineering Education Programme (CDEEP). These courses are regular courses taken by IITB students, transmitted live from the classroom, which have a studio like environment with projectors, cameras and mikes. CDEEP makes videos of these recorded lectures available to IITB students. Some courses coordinated by CDEEP use a learning management system, Moodle. In this paper we investigated IITB students' perceptions of the use of the above technologies in their engineering / science courses. We found that students largely perceive the recorded videos and the interactivity provided by Moodle as being productive for their learning. Their responses towards the classroom environment were mixed, a significant problem being the lack of perceived spontaneity in the classroom.