Abstract:
Engineering is a profession that demands analytical skills, intuitive understanding, and technical expertise. The quality of students generated by engineering schools is rapidly declining. Academic institutions play an integral role in developing high-quality engineers with the necessary skill set to compete in the global marketplace. However, the employment of traditional teaching and learning pedagogy prevents the formation of high-quality engineers. The proposed pilot project intends to incorporate creative teaching and learning pedagogies such as collaborative learning, peer learning, technology-enabled learning, and participative learning methodologies for students with various learning styles. Students' feedback, course-end surveys, and assessment data are used to evaluate the impact of applying innovative methods. The effectiveness of recommended strategies to promote indepth understanding, employability rate, and knowledge level of aspiring engineers has been demonstrated by a considerable improvement in student performance.
INTRODUCTION
Engineering is the most popular degree among students all over the world. "Scientists analyse what already exists; engineers invent what has never been," declared Albert Einstein. Engineers are the creators, rather than investigators. Engineering is a demanding degree with interesting employment opportunities in a variety of fields such as IT, core engineering, and management, as well as substantial income benefits, making it a popular study option for most students. Engineering is a multifaceted profession that has a positive impact on society and people's lives. A study conducted by „Aspiring minds‟ claims that,, using information and communication technology (ICT)-based teaching improves the quality of engineering education. Video lecturing, discussion forums, change in assessment pattern, industry partnership courses were used to check the effectiveness of the ICT based teaching method. The quality of engineering education is improved by employing Information and communication technology (ICT) based teaching. Video lecturing, discussion forums, change in assessment pattern, industry partnership courses were used to check the effectiveness of the ICT based teaching method In an e-learning environment, collaborative learning is used for programming courses. To analyse the student performance, metrics such as knowledge sharing, level of learning, work experience, and overall productivity were evaluated. According to a considerable improvement, collaborative learning can be utilised as a pedagogical method to increase teaching and learning capabilities in a programming course. Peer learning was used as a pedagogical tool in. In a research setting, learning from peers, colleagues, and students from both inside and outside the university boosted the skill set. Critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and self-learning skills all improved as a result of peer learning. Furthermore, it is more learner-centric, making it a useful tool for knowledge acquisition and transfer. At the university level, investigated students' and faculty members' learning habits. It was obvious from the study that students' learning styles differed depending on their gender, age, and course type. Various learning styles, such as participative learning, competitive learning, and cooperative learning, have gained popularity among students. Cooperative learning was utilised to assist students with various learning styles in achieving teamwork and deep learning .Students with cooperative and competitive learning styles improved their scores significantly, according to the observations.employed activity-based learning to teach an engineering theory course. Role-plays, games, case studies, and the use of tools were used, and the results were assessed using student feedback. When compared to traditional learning methods, the results demonstrate that students prefer activity-based learning. Students' active participation in class activities and continuous listening to lectures is limited by monotonous teaching and learning. This difficulty can be solved by piquing students' interests through the use of creative teaching and learning approaches. As a result, our research focuses on incorporating creative teaching approaches into the learning paradigm, such as collaborative learning, peer learning, technology-enabled learning, and active learning strategies for students with various learning styles. Course end surveys, student feedback, and assessment results for students with different learning styles outlined by GrashaReichmann are used to evaluate the suggested pedagogical improvements in teaching and learning. The following paper is structured as: The traditional teaching technique is described in Section II, and the methodology used is discussed in Section III. The performance of the proposed teaching learning paradigm is evaluated in Section IV. Section V concludes the paper and looks ahead to the future.
CONVENTIONAL TEACHING METHOD
Preparation of lesson plans with Course Outcomes (CO), course topics, and teaching methods for respective course materials is all part of the conventional teaching method. Bloom's taxonomy is used to establish the course outcomes. Conventional teaching resources such as chalk and board, as well as presentation slides (overhead projector and multimedia projector) are used to deliver the course. The assessment pattern includes a continuous assessment worth 50 points and a 50-point end-of-semester review. The continuous assessment consists of two periodic tests, an assignment, a tutorial, and quizzes. A written examination covering the course syllabus is part of the end-of-semester evaluation. The conventional teaching of learning Figure 1 depicts the framework. A. framework Figure 2 depicts the framework for the proposed novel methods in teaching and learning. Student feedback and assessment data are used to evaluate the effectiveness of the planned pedagogic adjustments. Fig. 1: Framework of Conventional Teaching Learning .
METHODOLOGY
Framework of proposed pedagogic change The study group is made up of 70 students from the Electronics and Communication Engineering department. The studies were conducted on a study group of students who were enrolled in a course called "Communication Engineering" in the sixth semester of their engineering bachelor's degree programme. There were 36 male students (52 percent) and 34 female students (48 percent) in the group. Further repercussions are made for continual process improvement based on the input and test analysis. B. Innovations in Teaching and Learning Four categories of best practises are used to improve the quality of teaching and learning and to encourage students to actively participate in the classroom environment. Peer learning: collaborative learning, technology-enabled learning, and participative learning are the best practices. Rather than learning from an authority figure, students learn from peers and fellow students in a relaxed environment. Peer learning encourages students to share their thoughts and helps them become more learner-centered . Peer learning was developed as part of an effort to improve teaching and learning by grouping students into groups. Students are divided into five groups based on their areas of interest, and each group is given an advanced technical topic in the "Communication Engineering" course. Each group's proposed topic is an end-to-end system that was constructed using the fundamentals covered in class. Methodology of peer learning A group presentation on the technical topic was used to asses the employed. Each group gave a presentation to the rest of the class and a faculty member on their topic. It was seen that each group did their best to present the topic, using material acquired from various sources and a text book. Students interacted with the presenters and clarified their doubts. Scores are awarded to the students based on content delivery, understanding level, and ability to answer questions. Collaborative learning is a group activity in which students collaborate to find a solution to a problem . The goal of the "Communication Engineering" course is to develop end-to-end telecommunication systems with a focus on modulation techniques, noise performance, and receiver design, among other things. Theoretical study of the subjects in this course is more abstract, and students are less interested in the subject. Implementing systems that imitate the theoretical notions is vital for understanding the topics realistically. MATLAB is a simulation tool that implements end-to-end communication networks using a proprietary programming language developed by Mathworks. Collaborative learning has been shown to be successful in the teaching of programming courses. Hence To learn MATLAB, collaborative learning is offered. Students were divided into groups and asked to use built-in Matlab functions to solve a brief issue statement. Students were eventually required to develop their own Matlab functions. Students gained expertise in the MATLAB programming language in this way. Collaborative learning was assessed based on the reasoning utilised in the code and the ability of the produced code to generalise. Students demonstrated teamwork and shared simple coding techniques. technology-enabled Learning: Today's students are more tech-savvy than previous generations. In recent years, the use of technology to teach pupils has gotten a lot of attention . It is a major responsibility to disseminate information and generate responses from pupils. The goal of a massive open online course (MOOC) is to provide high-quality study materials to the global student and faculty community. The MOOC courses provided by Coursera, edX, and NPTEL are of excellent quality. Students are grouped together depending on their MOOC course preferences and the provider. To gain an indepth understanding, students are advised to complete a MOOC certification. Students had a low reaction to the MOOC course. Participative Learning: In participative learning, both the teacher and students are actively involved in improving the teaching and learning process. It is a project-based learning approach aimed at fostering a positive relationship between the teacher and the students . Students in this type of instruction are more independent, but yet under the teacher's guidance and monitoring. Participative learning was achieved by dividing students into groups in order to improve teaching and learning. The kids are divided into five groups based on the teacher's preference. Each group is carefully selected to include children with a variety of learning styles and grades. In the "Communication Engineering" course, each group is allocated an advanced technical topic. The teacher distributes the topic's course materials. A group presentation on the technical issue was used to evaluate the participative learning style used. Each group gave a presentation to the rest of the class and a faculty member on their topic. It was observed that each group did their best to present the topic using material acquired from a variety of sources. Students are given grades depending on how well they present content, how much effort they put in, and their ability to solve complicated questions. When compared to peer learning, participative learning boosted understanding since the teacher shared the subject. However, the level of responsibility held by students participating in participative learning decreased over time. Figure 3 depicts the novel teaching strategies used in the proposed research.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Peer learning, collaborative learning, technology-enabled learning, and participative learning are all examples of new teaching approaches that have been examined with students with various learning styles. The study was evaluated using Grasha Reichmann's styles.
The percentage of students who use various learning styles is shown in Table II.The table shows that the dependent learning style is the most dominant, followed by collaborative, participative, independent, and avoidant learning styles
Innovative teaching and learning pedagogical methods such as collaborative learning, peer learning, technology-assisted learning, and student participative learning strategies are incorporated in this study. Students' feedback, course end surveys, and assessment outcomes with various learning styles are used to evaluate the impact of applying new methods. The effectiveness of recommended strategies to increase the quality of graduating engineers is claimed by a significant improvement in student performance. The future scope includes using active learning strategies, flipping classes, and generating video lectures to improve teaching quality, as well as analysing the impact of these techniques through student feedback and statistical correlation analysis. The proposed creative teaching pedagogical modification may aid in the improvement of teaching and learning, consequently assisting society in the production of high-quality engineers with good technical and problem-solving skills.
References
- Riechmann, Sheryl Wetter, and Anthony F. Grasha “A rational approach to developing and assessing the construct validity of a student learning style scales instrument.” in The Journal of Psychology 87, no. 2 (1974): 213-223.
- Jayalakshmi, V. Jalaja, R. K. Kavitha, and S. Niroza "A study on pair programming effectiveness in a computer laboratory course," in International Journal of Science, Technology Management, vol.5 , no.1, 2016.
- R.K. Kavitha, V. JalajaJayalakshmi, and R. Rassika “Collaborative learn- ing in Computer Programming Courses using E-Learning Environments,” in International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics ,vol. 118, no. 8, pp. 183-189, 2018.
0 Comments