Returning To On-Campus Activities For First-Year Engineering Skills Development - A Comparative Study

Prior work by the authors on student skills development detailed the implementation of a suite of skills modules in a first-year engineering course. These modules were instrumental components in supporting the course’s project-based framework that offered flexibility of choice and timing in a low-risk setting. It was found that, while receiving overall favourable student feedback, most students only completed the minimum requirements and largely chose technical modules according to the relevance to their project topic. Due to the cessation of on-campus teaching activities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, these modules were delivered wholly online. With the lifting of restrictions the following year, the modules were made available with several distinctions: (a) the option of completing wholly online or a mix of online and on-campus activities; and (b) a change to a graded assessment scheme to encourage students to put more effort into their completion. An evaluation performed on the modules revealed that online-only modules were attended at a rate comparable to on-campus activities. The distribution of module completions over the semester was influenced by module availability, students' time management and module alignment with their project. A higher concentration of module completions occurring closer to deadlines indicated that students were more time pressed and completed the modules just in time. A change to the grading scheme did not appear to affect the take up rates of the modules but did result in better quality of work. Students still elected to complete modules aligned with their project, consistent with previous trends.