JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION THEORY AND PRACTICE


Creating Self-Paced Online Engineering Courses for Post Graduate and Senior Undergraduate Students on Pavement Management

Author(s): DingXin Cheng

Citation: DingXin Cheng, (2018) "Creating Self-Paced Online Engineering Courses for Post Graduate and Senior Undergraduate Students on Pavement Management," Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice, Vol.18, Iss. 3, pp. 52-56

Article Type: Research paper

Publisher: North American Business Press

Abstract:

Compared with traditional engineering courses taught in classrooms, a self-paced online engineering
course has the advantages of distance learning, flexible study schedules, and it utilizes rapid growing
technologies including computers, internet, and software. In this paper, the knowledge and experience of creating several self-paced online pavement management courses were synthesized. Using these
pavement management courses as examples, this paper illustrates the procedure for developing online
courses, and the dos and don’ts of designing online classes. The principles of developing these online
courses are also presented in the paper. These principles include making contents attractive with graphs
and videos, creating effective quizzes with proper feedback, developing exam databanks with randomly
selected test questions for fairness, making navigation easy within a course, and automatically generating certificates to document successful completion. In addition, the paper presents the advantages and challenges of distance learning on self-paced engineering courses.