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Office of Educational Assessment
Program Evaluation Division		 Updated 12/20/2005

Civil and Environmental Engineering Anytime Anywhere
 
EVALUATION SUMMARY

This site is intended to facilitate communication among members of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Anytime Anywhere Leadership Team and to serve as a readily accessible archive of evaluation documents to assist in reporting to external stakeholders.


PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
 

In the College of Engineering, all undergraduates are required to take a set of “core” engineering courses as part of their degree. These courses are among the largest in College and resources are increasingly taxed as enrollment continues to rise. The purpose of the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Anytime Anywhere project is to use one of the core courses, CEE 220 Mechanics of Materials, as a test case to explore ways of serving a larger class that will maintain or enhance course quality without increasing resource costs. In the Winter 2005 offering of CEE 220, several changes were made to the traditional version of the course (listed below):

  • Use of an integrated online course system, called Moodle, that centralized and organized class materials, assignments, and activities
  • Online pre-lecture quizzes, implemented through the Moodle system, that were designed to prepare students for lecture above and beyond the reading itself
  • Homework assignments that were completed and immediately graded online, also via the Moodle system
  • Extra out-of-class help, including a weekly session at the Center for Learning and Undergraduate Enrichment (CLUE), specific tutoring times for CEE 220 at the Engineering Advising and Students Center (EASC), and an online discussion board (also a part of the Moodle system)
  • An option to attend weekly labs outside of the regularly scheduled sessions

EVALUATION PLAN
  The primary goal of the evaluation was to assess the impact of these changes on student performance, learning, and satisfaction. In addition, thorough formative information about each of the course innovations listed above was collected at a mid-point in the course and at the end of the term. Table 1 shows a timeline for all of the evaluation activities involved in this project.
 

Table 1. CEE Anytime Anywhere Activities and Timeline
 
Dec Jan Feb   Mar Apr May   Jun Jul Aug  
(a)  
  (b)  
  (c)  
  (d)
  (e, (f)  
  (g)
 
(a) Evaluation Planning (e) Analysis of student performance data
(b) Mid-term online survey and reporting (f) Analysis of course evaluation data
(c) Student interviews (g) Final reporting
(d) Instructor and TA interviews

FINDINGS
 

Reports

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