Although digital advances have enabled hundreds of universities to offer massive open online courses (MOOCs) to millions of students worldwide, the high dropout rate on these MOOCs indicates a disjunct between the potential of the offer and the success of its uptake. Many studies point to issues relating to interpersonal connection as a major…

The dropout rate of university engineering studies is correlated with the absence of retention of freshman in the basic subjects. The aim of this work is to determine the effect of cooperative learning and the characteristics of students on learning, persistence, and academic performance. We have performed a study of learning, persistence and…

The present study was carried out to determine the motivating factors for enrolling in an engineering study programme in open and distance learning (ODL) and the factors that affect the students' performance. The study was conducted with two convenient samples of students following distance learning courses in engineering technology, conducted by…

A computer programming class for students of mechanical engineering was redesigned and assessed: Cognitive Load Theory was used to redesign the content; online technologies were used to redesign the delivery. Student learning improved and the dropout rate was reduced. This article reports on both attitudinal and objective assessment: comparing…

This paper is a report on the teaching experiment conducted in the Introduction to Engineering I course at PUC-Rio's Technical-Scientific Center (CTC) during the two terms of 1997. The idea was to test and develop hands-on teaching methodology as set forth in "Hands-on Teaching and Concurrent Teaching: Relations and Difficulties" (Carmo…

Hispanics are one of the largest and fastest-growing minority groups in the United States. Projections indicate a need for an increase of 20% of practicing engineers by 2010. Despite the growing number of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) careers in the American economy, education statistics suggest that too few Hispanic students…

Progress on the University of Texas personalized system of instruction (PSI) project is described. Twelve courses in the College of Engineering and five in other colleges were developed for PSI under a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Each of those courses has now been offered at least once, thus making it possible to begin evaluating…