Contribution: This article provides evidence on the influence of serious games (SGs) in software engineering (SE) education on students' scores, exam attendance, and chance of passing. It also highlights the impact of teachers' experience with the implementation of SGs as a learning approach on the aforementioned metrics. Background: Although…

Contribution: This work sheds light on how classmate behaviors influence gender gaps in verbal participation in lecture-based engineering classes. It is found that after a woman participates in class, there is a temporarily increased likelihood a woman will participate again afterward. Background: Women continue to be underrepresented in STEM…

Contribution: This article contributes empirical insights on hybrid teaching of software engineering courses. Results include the systematic analysis of hybrid teaching attendance and interaction, perception of hybrid teaching, and grade distributions. Results are synthesized into eight evidence-based guidelines. Background: Hybrid teaching, i.e.,…

Contribution: This article describes and evaluates a novel undergraduate communication skills course for engineering students. The course focuses on improving student communication skills by using interactive lectures and authentic assessment activities in a scalable manner. Background: Published studies and reports suggest communication skills…

Contribution: A hybrid approach involving reduced lecture content with project-based learning (PBL) was introduced to a standalone course in optics at an engineering school not specialized in this area, with promising results. Background: At most schools, optics is an elective "niche" area involving a single senior course. This presents…

Contribution: This paper has demonstrated that the use of blended learning in an electrical machines course has increased student engagement, pass rate, and scores across the GPA spectrum. Background: Lack of engagement by students in electric machine courses have been reported across the world. Interventions however, usually take the form of…

This paper studies electrical engineering learners' preferences for learning methods with various degrees of activity. Less active learning methods such as homework and peer reviews are investigated, as well as a newly introduced very active (constructive) learning method called "slectures," and some others. The results suggest that…

Contribution: Active classroom programmer (ACP) is a software tool that places minimal pressure on resources, and is shown to help improve student learning while also encouraging a high degree of engagement both during and outside of programming lectures. Background: Programming is difficult for students, largely due to the myriad of…

Contribution: An improved inverted lecturing (IIL) framework based on blending flipped lectures and hands-on experiments provides instructional benefits, compared to traditional teaching (TT) and inverted lecturing (IL), in an introductory course in digital systems. Background: IL has proven more effective than TT in improving student learning in…

This article describes the implementation of a remote access experiment, called Web-lab 1553B (Digital Data Bus Lab), for courses in the Avionics Systems Program. Its main objective is to present a study about the use of two rotation model subgroups: 1) rotation laboratory and 2) station rotation. In the "rotation laboratory" subgroup,…

Some education specialists are challenging the use of traditional strategies in classrooms and are calling for the use of contemporary teaching and learning techniques. In response to these calls, many field experiments that compare different teaching and learning strategies have been conducted. However, to date, little is known on the outcomes of…

Contribution: This paper furthers understanding of how to use studio culture to develop instruction that supports learners' epistemic development in the context of an engineering senior design course, with a focus on student development of epistemic frames. Background: Current capstone engineering design courses do not integrate the educational…

The University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain, has the objective of making all the teaching material generated by its teachers freely available. To attain this objective, it encourages the development of Open Educational Resources, especially videos. This paper presents an experience of recording lectures and generating the corresponding videos as a step…

In response to demands from industry and the profession for more graduates, first-year engineering numbers have grown considerably over the last decade, matched by an increasing diversity of academic backgrounds. In order to support first-year students effectively, and ensure the courses they take remain appropriately pitched, the academic…

This paper proposes a method for seamless interaction between students and their professor using Twitter, one of the typical social network service (SNS) platforms, in large lectures. During the lecture, the professor poses surprise questions in the form of a quiz on an overhead screen at unexpected moments, and students submit their answers…