ECE Chairs Seminar Series - A Fully Online Accredited Undergraduate Electrical Engineering Program

The Electrical and Computer Engineering department will be hosting a seminar featuring Stephen M. Phillips, Ph.D., P.E., Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director of the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering at Arizona State University. The topic of the seminar will be A Fully Online Accredited Undergraduate Electrical Engineering Program.

Abstract

We have implemented a fully online undergraduate electrical engineering program at Arizona State University. I will describe the objectives for the program, how it was implemented and an assessment of the student outcomes.

The curriculum, admissions standards, accreditation and faculty delivering the program are identical for face-to-face and online delivery. The program was initially implemented primarily to extend the reach of our existing program to underserved student populations. Our enrolment statistics show that this goal was achieved to an extent much greater than anticipated. The characteristics of the online students enrolled in online delivery (age, professional experience, veteran/military status etc.) differ from those of the students enrolled face-to-face.

Another goal of the program is to develop an instructional approach that leverages the technology of online delivery to fundamentally change how student access the material and organize it according to their individual learning styles. We have developed course materials that are very dense, highly efficient and flexibly delivered. Our approach is completely different from “lecture-capture” approaches to online delivery. Our assessment process shows that there is very little difference between the achievement of student learning outcomes between the face-to-face delivery and online delivery.

Significant challenges for our online delivery have been the development of laboratory experiences and the proctoring of exams. Another challenge is to achieve acceptance of online delivery among our constituencies. This has been achieved to a significant extent as verified by the unexpectedly large demand among our students, the enthusiastic participation among a growing group of faculty members and discussions of our external advisory board which is dominated by industry members. A recent accreditation visit provides additional evidence of acceptance among the engineering community.

Speaker Bio

Stephen M. Phillips received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University. He served on the faculty of Case Western Reserve University from 1988 to 2002. He joined the faculty of Arizona State University in 2002. In 2005 was appointed department chair and in 2009 he was appointed director of the newly formed School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering.

Note: If you need more information regarding this seminar, please contact Dr. Jia Wang in ECE, IIT. Phone: 7-3696, Email: jwang@ece.iit.edu