Blending On-Line Tools in Engineering Courses Feza Kerestecioğlu Kadir Has University Istanbul, Turkey kerestec@khas.edu.tr Yasemin Bayyurt Boğaziçi University Istanbul, Turkey bayyurty@boun.edu.tr The 2nd World Conference on Blended Learning 2017

Outline Introduction Context of the study Current mode of teaching Course and Curriculum Why gone blended? Current mode of teaching Preliminary results Conclusions The 2nd World Conference on Blended Learning 2017

Introduction Changing times, changing instructional practices Face to Face Online Blended Blended learning (BL) gives the students “… the opportunity to advance in their own pace using e-learning techniques where the content can be delivered electronically (mostly online)’’ (Ogrenci, 2013) enables students to “… develop a sense of agency and ownership for their progress and a subsequent ability to guide their learning’’ (Horn and Staker, 2015) Why BL in engineering courses? For maximum student success (in exams, assignments, etc.) To give students many chances to practice the content presented in the classroom The 2nd World Conference on Blended Learning 2017

Context of Study Course and curriculum Kadir Has University, Istanbul Department of Electrical –Electronics Engineering Medium of instruction: English EE 352 Control Systems Electrical-Electronics Engineering junior-level core course Modeling and analyzing dynamic systems Mathematics background (differential equations, matrix algebra) is required Compulsory or elective in other engineering curricula The 2nd World Conference on Blended Learning 2017

Context of Study Why did we go blended? Ten years of traditional methods of teaching Degradation in the motivation Decreasing attendance rate Plagiarism attempts in homework Classwork Increasing attendance Focused students during the lecture ‘‘Teach your classmate’’ Restricting learning process to the classroom The 2nd World Conference on Blended Learning 2017

Current Mode of Teaching Face-to-face teaching Asynchronous on-line tools Videos Discussion Forum Assignments PowerPoint videos Homework Public Youtube videos Discussion board The 2nd World Conference on Blended Learning 2017

Preliminary Results Student Profile Native speakers of Turkish 33 Speakers of English as a foreign language Speakers of other languages as a foreign language 11 Prefers textbooks as printed material 10 electronic material 7 both, printed and electronic 16 Took an on-line course   28 Average number of online course involved 2.8 Took an on-line course out of the university 3 Took a blended course before 8 The 2nd World Conference on Blended Learning 2017

Contributing students Preliminary Results Course video access Videos Accessing students Total access times Homework submitted Introduction 40 172 27 Review of Laplace Transform 34 107 23 Math. Models of Dynamic Systems 29 81 20 Transient Response Analysis 25 47 13  Discussion board posts Thread Contributing students Student posts Instructor posts Trajectory Planning 24 32 29 Solving Differential Equations 22 27 16 Suspension Systems 8 9 The 2nd World Conference on Blended Learning 2017

Preliminary Results Student Reflections “I find the videos very useful. I use them while preparing for the exam.” (Student A) “We can wind and rewind the sections we want to listen to over and over again.” (Student B) “We can listen to the lectures that we missed thanks to the videos in the Blackboard Learn platform.” (Student C). The 2nd World Conference on Blended Learning 2017

Conclusions Rewards Students do better in the exams and the assignments They interact more with their instructor and their peers Limitations Familiarity is needed with the use of a blended learning environment Difficulties in using the online component of the BL course More research is needed for the generalizability of the results The 2nd World Conference on Blended Learning 2017