In 2015, I was invited to the 10th Anniversary Celebration Reception of the College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (CSTEM) at Eastern Washington University (EWU) in Cheney, Washington. This event hosted several amazing speakers from local companies and former alumni. It also showcased several of the robotic engineering and animation labs, where a variety of student projects were on display.

Students taking technical courses online face different challenges in an online learning environment. Parents, teachers and students are familiar with the traditional, ‘brick and mortar’ approaches to education. It’s what we were raised with. In that environment, students are gathered into an assigned space at a specific time where a teacher provides the instruction. The teacher leads in the presentation of the content and then moves to a lab-based activity. This is a linear focused approach that has instructional milestones and sets evaluations (i.e. quizzes or exams) to confirm student understanding and mastery of a set of objectives over a fixed period of time.

What model and approach works for the students today?