Experiences in cross-teaching within a distance education environment
Journal
2013 ASEE International Forum
Series/Report No.
ASEE International Forum
ISSN
2380-8209
Date Issued
2013-06-22
Author(s)
Abstract
A project-based course in Robotics was created to serve as an elective for engineering students at
the University of Georgia (UGA) and National Taiwan University (NTU). It was implemented
during the Spring and Fall 2012 semesters with a total of 27 students from both universities. It
was designed around 4-5 projects with lectures and laboratory demonstrations performed by the
instructors (from both sides) to provide necessary background materials for students to carry on
successfully with their chosen projects. The major difficulties were the differences in the start
date and duration of the respective courses at each university and prevented our attempt to
synchronize student progress and interaction. The "technical" issues turned out to be easily
solved by each side using similar hardware and software. The instructional materials were shared
via classroom capture and webcasting technologies: recordings of live lectures from either
university were re-purposed to accommodate the flow and topical differences in the materials
taught and frequency of class weekly attendance - twice a week for NTU students and once a
week for NTU students. We also had found the necessity to change the instructor-student
interaction method as NTU students were less comfortable in interacting directly with the UGA
instructor. Student surveys at both universities showed strong enthusiasm for the Project-Based
Learning approach. Differences in student motivation and project quality were found between
the 2 universities, perhaps as an unplanned consequence of the differences in how each
university provided the students access to the robotic hardware and software components.
Type
conference paper