Engineering Education Transformations Institute UGA

As the University System of Georgia transitions to fully online learning in the wake of COVID-19, EETI is here to provide support and resources for engineering faculty to help the College of Engineering succeed and excel in the transition.  This page serves as a compendium of online learning resources that UGA faculty may find helpful, based on conversations within the College.

Getting Started

USG Rapid Short Course Guide to Online Teaching – A web version of the Rapid Short Course guide all UGA faculty have access to through eLC. This course will walk you through all the basics of setting up an eLC course for online learning.  (You must be logged into a Google account outside of UGA’s ecosystem to access this site.)

Moving STEM courses online – Tips and Resources – A compendium of advice and resources for STEM faculty moving courses online, developed collaboratively by a national community of STEM educational developers via the POD STEM SIG.  It includes advice for conducting online learning effectively in terms of direct instruction, labs, projects, and assessments, all geared toward a STEM audience, including engineering.  Each section also includes several technologies available to leverage for different kinds of instruction.

Guiding Principles for Teaching During Significant Disruptions – A guide that offers expert tips and advice for online teaching from our CTL.  While it is not specific to STEM, it does offer insights specific to the opportunities and constraints afforded at UGA.

Best Practices for Teaching Online – A brief one-pager on good online learning practices from ASU’s Teach Online office.

Asynchronous Instruction – Creating and Uploading Videos

Option 1: Kaltura

Kaltura is the only video recording software that integrates directly with UGA’s learning management system, eLC.

Creating and Uploading Video and Audio in Kaltura – A detailed visual guide for creating and uploading videos via Kaltura.

Captioning in Kaltura – How to order free machine captions in Kaltura.  Captions help ensure our online videos are accessible to a wider range of students.

Sharing via Kaltura – Instructions on a variety of ways to add your Kaltura uploads to your eLC courses

Option 2: PowerPoint

If you designed your slides directly in PowerPoint, you can record yourself narrating and annotating your slide presentation within the program.

Record a slide show with narration and slide timings – A visual guide to recording PowerPoint presentations

Turn your presentation into a video – How to export your recording as a video file or PPT Presentation file

Option 3: Recording via Zoom

If other options do not work well for you, you can record yourself alone in a Zoom meeting.  Zoom cloud recordings from your UGA account are automatically uploaded to your UGA Kaltura account for unlimited storage and sharing.

UGA Zoom Portal – Access your UGA Zoom account from here

Zoom Recording Guide – A series of visual guides detailing how to record your Zoom meetings and how to access your recordings

Improvising a Document Camera with Zoom – A popular Zoom “hack” to improvise a document camera if you do not have a tablet.  Great for working through problems on paper.

Synchronous Instruction – Teleconferencing with Students via Zoom

Zoom is UGA’s most well-supported and full-featured video conferencing platform.  College of Engineering faculty and students have access to Zoom Pro licenses via the UGA Zoom Portal.

UGA Zoom Portal – Access your UGA Zoom account from here

Meetings and Webinars in Zoom – Thorough, visual documentation of how to use Zoom

Best Practices for Securing Your Virtual Classroom – Tips from Zoom to secure your online classroom from unauthorized attendance and hijacking by malicious actors (“Zoombombing”)

Zoom – A guide to interactive features – An EETI-developed guide to five Zoom features you can use to interact and engage with your students during synchronous meetings

Zoom – Generating a Participant List from your Meetings – A guide to locate and view the participant list from each of your meetings.  Useful for documenting attendance during Zoom meetings.

Online Assessment

Online Exam Strategies in UGA’s College of Engineering – A collaborative document compiling the online exam approaches of instructors in UGA’s College of Engineering.  Learn how your colleagues are tackling this challenge, and let them know what you’re doing as well!

Remote Exams and Assessments for Quantitative Courses – Tips for designing quantitatively focused exams in online environments, as well as alternative assessments to exams.  Proctored online exams (where students are supervised from a distance) have many disadvantages and should be used only as a last resort.  This webpage will help you design assessments that bypass the need for proctoring.

Multiple-Choice Questions to Assess Higher-Order Thinking – If you elect to host online exams, the most effective way to prevent cheating is to assume that all exams are open-resources (books, notes, etc.)  Effective open-book exams involve assessing higher-order thinking skills, rather than recall of course concepts and problem-solving approaches.  This free book chapter gives examples of multiple-choice questions designed to assess these higher-order thinking skills.  While the examples come from science disciplines, the principles behind them are applicable to engineering as well.

Including an Honor Pledge in Syllabi and Exams – A guide to honor pledge usage from the University of Maryland, whose honor pledge is a good general use statement for any assessment (“I pledge on my honor that I have not given or received any unauthorized assistance on this assignment/examination.”)  It is good practice to require students to “sign” an honor pledge for online exams.

Quiz Time Limits in eLC – A brief explanation from UGA’s OVPI about how different options for quiz time limits in eLC work

Moving Labs Online

How do I move my labs (experimental work) online? – A brief but detailed “thinking guide” to help STEM faculty decide among various strategies for shifting lab content online.  Remote and virtual labs are two such options, but there are other alternatives as well.  Created by faculty developers from Switzerland’s Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and refers to the LMS and technologies their institution uses, but there’s also plenty of great general advice.

Option 1: Remote Labs

Remote labs consist of physically existing laboratory equipment, accessible remotely via the internet. Students can perform experiments online from home with real lab equipment and real data. Depending on the source, remote labs can support synchronous experimentation (instant interaction between user and lab) or asynchronous experimentation (lab shows prerecorded videos of the experimentation procedure). Both modes allow students to perform individual experiments with self-selected input values.

LabsLand Laboratories – A collection of remote laboratories on a variety of topics with which UGA’s College of Engineering collaborates.  LabsLand offers free usage for all educational institutions until summer 2020. For further details or to be added to UGA’s license, please contact Dr. Dominik May at dominik.may@uga.edu.  Some labs of interest include:

  • Electronics Lab – Remote lab for working with breadboards and electrical measurement tools to experiment with the laws and principles that define analogic electronics
  • Diffusion Lab – Remote lab for investigating the the movement of molecules, particles or atoms from areas of higher concentration to areas of lower one.  Developed at UGA by Dr. Grace Pokoo-Aikins.

Option 2: Virtual Labs

Virtual labs are fully virtual laboratories (simulations) in which students can perform experiments and practice their skills in engaging and risk-free learning environments. The labs are supported by theory pages and quiz questions throughout the lab experience. Experiments in virtual labs are typically based on predefined data and simulations.

Labster – A large collection of virtual labs with which UGA’s College of Engineering collaborates.  Labster offers a high variety of virtual labs in the areas biology, chemistry, engineering, medicine and physics. The engineering labs include the topics concrete material testing, silo design, and wastewater treatment. For further details, please contact Dr. Dominik May at dominik.may@uga.edu.  Some additional Labster resources:

Would you like to learn more about EETI?

Connect With Us