Inside the Online Classroom with Mechanical Engineering Professor Regina Vrikkis

Friday, September 4, 2020

Regina Vrikkis

Mechanical Engineering, Lee College of Engineering

In an effort to shed some more light on the measures faculty members are taking to assure the online courses they teach this fall align with students’ learning needs and expectations, we reached out to Vrikkis to see how she is approaching a few of her courses this fall semester.

What steps are you taking to create an effective online learning environment for your students?

I taught three 100-percent-online asynchronous courses over the summer (Thermodynamics I, Thermodynamics II, and Heat Transfer), and I’m teaching two 100-percent-online synchronous courses in the Fall (Thermodynamics I and II). My goal is to offer students the flexibility of an online course without sacrificing what a face-to-face course affords. There are so many tools available to us as faculty to give students that—and I have had a lot of fun trying those tools out! Live lectures streamed online give students the ability to ask questions in real time, while still being able to access the streams again after lecture. Virtual office hours allow for students to “pop in” just like they would normally any other semester. Being present, engaging and accessible is so important, especially in an online course.

I’m also trying to anticipate things students will be concerned about—tests being the main thing. Engineering tests are stressful for our students in a face-to-face environment, and can potentially be even more stressful in an online environment. I’m ensuring that students have the opportunity to practice taking an exam, which means they can see how proctoring will work, what the format of the test will look like and what types of things they will have access to. Whenever you design an online course, you always have to think about how it is going to feel for students.

In trying to create an effective course website, I have drawn on the strategies of effective website design in general. I want students to want to visit my course website. That means it has to be not only easy to navigate, but visually appealing. As a female in a male-dominated field, it’s given me a chance to infuse a little personality and femininity into my course site!

What should students do to be successful in your online classes?

There are some wonderful advantages of an online course. Often instructors will post their live streamed lectures so that if you miss the class, you can watch it later. Or you can rewatch a lecture that you just didn’t get the first time around. That's the beauty of an online class! However, be warned! With flexibility comes responsibility. I advise against cramming four recorded lectures in a day. That's crazy, and an excellent way to set yourself up to see your instructor again next semester. Get in a routine. Your best strategy is to watch and participate in those live streamed lectures during the scheduled lecture time, and don't get behind.

How are you prepared to navigate the unique landscape of this fall semester?

The challenges are not an excuse for a poorly planned course on my part, and I look at those challenges as wonderful opportunities to learn new skill sets that I did not have before.

In short, my approach is plan, plan, plan. Be flexible, but without lowering the standards we expect of our students. Anticipate issues, and always have a plan B and C for when certain things don’t work. At the end of my course, whatever the delivery method, I am still responsible for students coming out with a body of knowledge that they will use in the workforce.

How will you create a sense of classroom community within an online environment?

I encourage students to form virtual study groups, similar to what they do in a face-to-face environment. Engineering curriculum is tough, especially without other folks to bounce ideas and thoughts off of. Some students know each other and that will be easy and natural, but for students who do not know anyone, I plan to provide a sign-up sheet in the fall for study groups to group them.

I also plan to make my lectures as inclusive and engaging as possible. If I want students to be interactive and personable, I need to be interactive and personable—just like in a face-to-face class. Anything that I can do to make students feel like they are not a face in a virtual oblivion—like addressing people by their name, calling on students who have not participated yet—will help.

Some students, just like in a face-to-face classroom, will seem to disappear. And perhaps even more so than in a face-to-face environment. It is so important to reach out to those students personally and individually because it’s so easy to disappear online. I keep track of who comes to the live lectures, and if a student stops coming, I reach out. A quick email to check in on someone personally shows students they do matter. What they do in your class matters. And even if they have ‘tuned out,’ it is not too late to ‘tune back in.’

And I plan to just have fun with it! Students feed on an instructor’s energy. So a two-carafe coffee system is definitely going to be part of the equation in the fall!