Web-based delivery of electrical engineering: challenges faced and outcomes

The 'EE1 Online' project [HREF3] is a large collaborative team project which aims to develop a prototype for an online learning environment for undergraduate engineering students. Our chosen subject is an introduction to the fundamentals of electrical engineering. It is difficult to teach, due to the theoretical and sometimes dry nature of the subject matter, but primarily due to the large variation in students' backgrounds. We aimed to make the content more interesting to students through visual animations and circuit simulations, and by presenting the material at various levels of complexity and abstraction, thus making it a valuable tool over the world wide web whilst catering for the diversity of student backgrounds. The current work evaluates the project, the methods used, the resulting online learning environment and how this project may impact on future projects in the Faculty of Engineering. The evaluation of the team dynamics is also important due to the cross collaborative nature of the project.