Study of the Success or Failure of Changing Freshman Engineering Technology Courses to an Online Format: Did it Work?

The Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology Department at IUPUI has gradually changed two courses from a traditional lecture / laboratory format to an online format over the past three years. Both online courses were developed with cooperation of the course coordinator and an instructional design team, and both courses have received praise as examples of excellent course design. These two courses have a different history: the digital course, the first in the digital sequence, has been regarded as a straightforward class, while the programming course is traditionally considered a difficult course. The Internet versions of these courses have been successful for some students, and very difficult for others. At first glance, statistics seem to indicate that the transition was a failure: withdrawal rates were much higher than previous classes, student complaints were up significantly, and rates of students receiving D's or F's seemed to be higher. This paper presents an analysis of the data to determine if the transition was a poor choice and a discussion of factors involved in this transition