Engineering Education in the Internet Age: Contrasting Faculty Adoption

Abstract

This study examines internet usage in undergraduate mechanical engineering courses in a small private university in California, with the goal of establishing best practices for faculty implementation of online content. To do this, six mechanical engineering faculty were interviewed regarding their use of internet resources in their various courses, and their views on how successful or unsuccessful they were in using the internet to improve their pedagogy. A survey was then administered to junior and senior mechanical engineering students to identify their needs and to triangulate the interview findings. It was found that faculty can be grouped into three general archetypes based on their use of online resources in each of their courses: internet resisters, internet users, and internet adopters. It was also found that while professors would invariably teach each individual course as a single archetype, most would teach different courses as different archetypes, to best fit each course's requirements and content. Strengths and weaknesses of each archetype are identified, and a continuing dialog between engineering faculty and students is recommended to determine what practices will best fit the needs of the internet-savvy student population within each course.