TY - JOUR
T1 - Design issues in a cross-institutional collaboration on a distance education course
AU - Wang, Xuemei
AU - Dannenhoffer, John F.
AU - Davidson, Barry D.
AU - Spector, J. Michael
N1 - Funding Information:
on engineering environments and practice (Goldin, Venneri, & Noor, 1999). As a result of technological advances, they believed that future work environments would support highly effective sharing of information among diverse and geographically distributed teams. These new distributed collaborative environments would allow experts in dispersed locations to collaborate, to rapidly apply novel technologies, to create better products in less time while better managing risk, and, overall, to significantly facilitate the creation of new knowledge. At that time, NASA began several initiatives aimed at realizing this vision. One of these initiatives was the Advanced Interactive Discovery Environment (AIDE) for Engineering Education project. This project was funded primarily by NASA, with support from the State of New York and the AT&T Foundation, and was carried out by Syracuse University and Cornell University. The primary goal of this project was to develop the AIDE—a virtual (Web-based) environment through which geographically dispersed teams can work effectively. Secondary goals included assessing the effectiveness of this environment, introducing graduating engineers to the potential uses of such environments, and exploring the use of this environment and related advanced information technologies for improving undergraduate engineering education. To this end, Syracuse University and Cornell University chose to create a senior-level engineering design course that was taught synchronously at both universities. This provided a context in which geographically distributed design teams could be created and through which all of the secondary project goals could be achieved. Importantly, those faculty members involved believed that this provided a unique opportunity to teach students systems-level, multidisciplinary, team-based problem-solving approaches; to introduce them to the latest collaboration, communication, and simulation technologies; and to prepare them to excel in the workplace. That is, the participating faculty members were highly motivated to make this an outstanding experience for the students, regardless of the AIDE project’s objectives and requirements.
PY - 2005/11
Y1 - 2005/11
N2 - Collaborative learning has been gaining momentum as a promising pedagogy in higher education. Research on student collaboration is increasing. However, one arena is often overlooked-faculty collaboration. In this article, a cross-institutional faculty collaboration is presented. The context is faculty collaboration on the design of an undergraduate engineering course. Specifically, this paper examines design issues encountered in the faculty collaborations associated with developing, delivering, and redesigning a senior-level engineering design course that was taught simultaneously at two universities. This course was taught in state-of-the-art distance learning classrooms. Both within class and outside class, participating students and faculty made use of a Web-based environment that supported a variety of synchronous and asynchronous interactions. The course itself focused on team design projects and provided instruction on the engineering design process, in various specific skills needed for the students' projects, and on how to function effectively as part of a geographically distributed engineering design team. The participating faculty members represented different backgrounds, academic disciplines, and academic cultures. Issues related to collaborations on development, delivery, and redesign are elaborated. Based on the lessons learned, suggestions for future cross-institutional faculty collaboration in course development are provided.
AB - Collaborative learning has been gaining momentum as a promising pedagogy in higher education. Research on student collaboration is increasing. However, one arena is often overlooked-faculty collaboration. In this article, a cross-institutional faculty collaboration is presented. The context is faculty collaboration on the design of an undergraduate engineering course. Specifically, this paper examines design issues encountered in the faculty collaborations associated with developing, delivering, and redesigning a senior-level engineering design course that was taught simultaneously at two universities. This course was taught in state-of-the-art distance learning classrooms. Both within class and outside class, participating students and faculty made use of a Web-based environment that supported a variety of synchronous and asynchronous interactions. The course itself focused on team design projects and provided instruction on the engineering design process, in various specific skills needed for the students' projects, and on how to function effectively as part of a geographically distributed engineering design team. The participating faculty members represented different backgrounds, academic disciplines, and academic cultures. Issues related to collaborations on development, delivery, and redesign are elaborated. Based on the lessons learned, suggestions for future cross-institutional faculty collaboration in course development are provided.
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U2 - 10.1080/01587910500291546
DO - 10.1080/01587910500291546
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:27944477380
SN - 0158-7919
VL - 26
SP - 405
EP - 423
JO - Distance Education
JF - Distance Education
IS - 3
ER -