Fostering Student Engagement and Learning in Online and Flex Delivered Thermodynamics Courses via Two-Stage Concept Inventory Quizzes in Time of COVID

The COVID-19 pandemic has required many engineering programs to design and deliver their courses in more flexible formats, including courses that involve teaching students who are participating remotely and face-to-face at the same time (flex courses). However, in the meantime, it is essential to ensure that students are remaining actively engaged in the learning process and that their remote presence is not negatively affecting their conceptual understating of the course materials. The objective of this study was to use concept inventory in the format of a two-stage quiz to investigate how this format impacts students’ performance and engagement in both online and flex delivery modes. During two-stage quizzes, students first work on conceptual problems individually and then collaborates in groups that are remote or hybrid. This approach applied for two sections of an Engineering Thermodynamics class, one delivered in flex dual-mode format and one fully online. It was interesting to see how the level of confidence and students’ perception to answer conceptual questions including misconceptions, change as they interact in different forms of teams. The statistical analysis shows there is no significant difference between online and flex mode results, however students confidence level in answering concept-based questions increases significantly in group answers for both modalities. Additionally, an anonymous survey was developed to receive student’s perceptions and feedback about their learning experience.