Digitizing Mechanical Engineering Education: An Early Review

Practice Paper Recommended citation: Moseley, A., Løje, H., & Jensen, J. K. (2025). Digitizing Mechanical Engineering Education: An Early Review. In Kangaslampi, R., Langie, G., Järvinen, H.-M., & Nagy, B. (Eds.), SEFI 53rd Annual Conference. European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI), Tampere, Finland. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17631519. This Conference Paper is brought to you for open access by the 53rd Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI) at Tampere University in Tampere, Finland. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License. DIGITIZING MECHANICAL ENGINEERING EDUCATION: AN EARLY REVIEW A. Moseley a, 1 , H. Løje b, J.K. Jensen c a Technical University of Denmark, Ballerup, Denmark, https://orcid.org/0009-0004-7493-3003 b Technical University of Denmark, Ballerup, Denmark, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3843-451X c Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2955-1001 Conference Key Areas: Digital tools and AI in engineering education; Open and Online education for engineers Keywords: digital teaching, learning design, online learning ABSTRACT This practice paper presents how the Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering program at a technical university in northern Europe was adapted to be offered in an online format beginning in 2023. The curriculum and instruction were redesigned to better suit an online setting, with an emphasis placed on theory and pedagogy that would facilitate student motivation in a remote setting. This paper explores the program’s development and early observations that could inform other efforts to digitize education to meet the needs and expectations of 21st century learners. We conclude that while online learning settings present challenges to student retention, existing educational programs can be successfully adapted to an online setting with careful attention to supporting students’ motivation and engagement. However, future research is needed to understand how these programs can be refined to better meet the needs of both students and teachers in online settings. 1 Corresponding Author A. Moseley [email protected] 1 INTRODUCTION Students today have more options than ever for learning new skills online instead of on university campuses, from formalized courses and micro credentials via MOOCs to swaths of content across platforms that teach anything under the sun. In the face of this evolving information landscape and changes in how young people prefer to learn, universities have had to reflect on and adapt what they offer students to compete for students’ attention, leading to influx of online degree programs that offer students more flexibility than traditional on-campus programs. The Technical University of Denmark (DTU) elected to offer an online version of their existing Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.) in Mechanical Engineering program to appeal to students for whom the on-campus program was not a good fit. Now two years after implementing the online program, this paper will explore some of the lessons that have been learned from initiating a new study structure for B.Eng. students and reflect on ways to continue improving. The reflections here will be of interest to engineering teachers, educators, educational consultants and administrators seeking to implement or improve their own online degree programs as well as to anyone interested in how universities can innovate to meet the needs of 21st century students. 2 CONTEXT, CREATION, & CURRICULAR CREATIVITY In this context, a B.Eng. degree is a professional bachelor’s degree lasting 3.5 years and including a 30 ECTS internship with a company and a 20 ECTS applied engineering project that finalizes the education. The university’s online B.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering was conceived in an effort to attract students from other regions of the country and utilize the learnings on online teaching that were garnered under the COVID-19 pandemic. The program would retain 20 hours per week of synchronous teaching that students could attend from anywhere with an Internet connection, yielding geographic flexibility but limited temporal flexibility. In addition, the students would be expected to spend short periods of time on campus at certain intervals to build community and access lab spaces for hands-on-learning that could not be replicated online. While the program has been dubbed a ‘digital twin’ of the on-campus Mechanical Engineering course, it in fact is quite distinct from the original course of study in its design. However, the overall goal of the program is the same for the two educations. Of note, while this endeavor was the first time that DTU pursued an online degree program, it was not the first time that an online B.Eng. program was developed in Denmark. In 2015, another university launched an online electrical engineering degree that operated in tandem with its on-campus program (Godsk et al., 2017). As such, the two programs were closely aligned and formatted to meet the needs of both groups. In contrast, DTU aspired to launch a distinct online offering that was tailored to the online setting, and the design process paid particular attention to the known challenges of retention in online education (Hobson & Puruhito, 2019; Rovai, 2003; Simpson, 2013). Thus, an established theoretical framework for motivation and persistence in higher education was employed to mitigate this challenge, which will be discussed in the following section. The DTU mechanical engineering teachers collaborated with the university’s team of education developers to redesign the curriculum around semester-long projects. For example, in the first semester, courses are designed around a project on engineering wind turbines. It also features a dramatically reduced enrolment capacity to ensure that students have sufficient access to teachers and to foster a more intimate sense of community. Thus, the online cohorts have a maximum of 25 students as opposed to 75 in the on-campus study line. Both initiatives were rooted in theory of student motivation from Tinto (2017) with the intention to explicitly hone students’ perception of curriculum and sense of belonging. 2.1 Curriculum Restructure A course of study requiring extensive time in laboratories could not be adapted to an online setting without careful considerations. Consequently, deliberate efforts were made to consider how to make a mechanical engineering program work in an online setting in a way that would foster student success. The curriculum was restructured with the intention of supporting students’ understanding of how all the elements fit together, and this overview of that process was informed by conversations with the program’s head of study, teachers, and educational consultants who were involved in the process. Tinto’s (2017) well-known model of student motivation and persistence undergirds much of DTU’s work when it comes to refining the student experience. This model defines motivation as ‘the interaction among student goals, self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and perceived worth or relevance of the curriculum’ (ibid., p. 255). Since students in an online program might be expected to experience a diminished sense of belonging to their study community relative to students who study on-campus, it was decided to explicitly strengthen students’ perception of the curriculum and foster a sense of belonging to support their motivation and persistence. Tinto (2017) defines “perception of curriculum” quite broadly such that it includes measures of perceived quality and relevance, the latter of which could be particularly salient in the context of a professional bachelor’s program that is oriented around practical application. Subsequently, two methods are posed through which the university can foster positive student perceptions of curriculum: problemor projectbased learning and contextualization. While the former is a straightforward application of learning to relevant situations, contextualization in this context refers to the teaching of more abstract subjects contextualized with respect to their application in more interesting fields (Tinto, 2017, p. 263). In the case of mechanical engineering, an obvious example would be the teaching of mathematics in a way that contextualizes new concepts with their application to real engineering dilemmas. Thus, the traditional curriculum for the B.Eng. program was flipped on its head and redesigned around semester-long projects starting in the first semester. Courses like math and mechanics were restructured to complement the projects so that, to the degree possible, topics could be contextualized with their applications, thus buoying students’ perception of the relevance of these topics. This process required collaboration across the teaching team with input from educational developers. The team was able to step outside of the university’s standard mould for courses which usually prescribed 5 ECTS per course and instead divvied the same learning objectives up into courses of varying weights and lengths to create a more cohesive and intentional curriculum. Within these courses, teachers still encouraged collaboration and required group work for projects to facilitate a sense of community amongst the students despite their lack of physical proximity. These efforts, in conjunction with the reduced cohort size that facilitates a more intimate educational environment, aspired to bolster students’ sense of belonging (another of Tinto’s pillars of motivation) by ensuring as much contact as possible with both other students and the teaching staff. Further, the teaching staff was encouraged to embrace “just-in-time teaching,” a technology-driven pedagogical practice developed in late 1990s to facilitate more interaction between students and teachers during class time by having students preview material before class (McGee et al., 2016, p. 17). Then, most importantly, teachers can identify misunderstandings and correct them ‘just-in-time’ during class instead of later when doing formative or summative assessments. Research suggests that this model of teaching can improve students’ learning, motivation, and attendance, and its technology-driven nature made it a natural fit for an online degree program (Novak, 2011, pp. 65, 71). There is evidence that comparable pedagogical methods can improve student self-efficacy, perhaps due to students’ having increased responsibility for their learning and more opportunities for feedback during class time (Latorre-Cosculluela et al., 2022). This improved self-efficacy could also promote student motivation and persistence per Tinto’s model. 3 RESULTS AND INSIGHTS Even though there is still at least a year and a half until the first students graduate from the online mechanical engineering program, we have already observed patterns that warrant discussion. So far, the cohorts that have started in 2023 and 2024 have seen high rates of drop out as early as the first few weeks of the program. At the same time, those who persist have demonstrated high levels of competency that rival or even out-pace their on-campus peers. Further observations, opinions, and reflections from a variety of stakeholders including students, teachers, the head of study, and educational developers involved with the program have been synthesized to generate an impression of how the online program is developing student engineers in comparison to the on-campus program. 3.1 The Teacher Experience A notable obstacle to the restructuring of the curriculum was a lack of sufficient time for the teaching team to dedicate to the process. Once it was decided to launch an online program, things moved very quickly. While teachers were expected to adopt new teaching tools and methods, several teachers report having almost no allotted time to familiarize themselves with these tools and reconfigure their teaching plans to accommodate the incorporation of new tools and pedagogies. This was a frustrating experience for some, likened to building a plane while it is in the air. This frustration was particularly salient due to the small cohort size of the online program. Teachers accustomed to teaching 75 students at a time reported feeling exasperated by the expectation to put so much work in for a small group of 20 students while simultaneously being limited in how they could improve their teaching for the much larger on-campus cohort. To ease these tensions, there was less pressure from the top down to implement techniques like just-in-time teaching for the second year to the same degree of fidelity as the first in hopes of lessening the burden on teachers. More dedicated time for the teaching staff to adapt their plans and learn new systems for teaching effectively online would likely have made for a smoother transition. Further, the project-based curricular structure and just-in-time teaching could have been piloted in the existing face-to-face program to strengthen the incorporation of researchbased pedagogy into the Mechanical Engineering program while providing an opportunity for teachers to adapt in a more familiar setting. This would have required a longer timeline for planning and launching the online program, but it would have allowed for an alignment between the on-campus and online programs that would lend itself to comparing student learning between the two programs on a more granular level. 3.2 The Student Experience The students who have enrolled in the online program tend to be older than those in the on-campus program and subsequently have more existing obligations like families or full-time jobs than traditional university students. However, that means that they also have more real-world experience that they can bring to their studies and share with their peers. While in the first cohorts most qualified applicants have been accepted regardless of their previous educational or work experience, the program’s head of studies affirms that the ideal vision would be for the online program to primarily serve non-traditional university students, i.e. those coming back to pursue further education after time in the workforce. Meanwhile, first-time students coming straight from secondary school or gap years would be directed to the oncampus program. However, the current 20 hours of weekly synchronous teaching activities can be a scheduling barrier for prospective students who want to fit their studies around pre-existing obligations. The flexibility in place but not time is likely a place of misalignment between what students are looking for in an online program and what the university is currently able to offer. Students who have now been in the online program for several semesters identify three main benefits to their choice of study setting. First, the small class size has meant that students are able to interact with teachers much more frequently. They report having the ability to ask questions in real time during class without concern that they are taking up too much class time. This has made lectures more engaging for students because they feel like they can be more active in them. Second, the lack of transit time to campus means that students can use their time in ways that feel more productive. One student noted that being able to properly focus on studying as opposed to trying to make use of transit time for reading while balancing other obligations has improved their experience. Finally, the online program has allowed students to make use of workspaces that suit their needs. Instead of relying on a laptop due to the need to transport a computer back and forth, students have created study zones at home that are more ergonomic, including desktop computers with proper keyboards and screens that allow for more effective notetaking. These themes from students indicate that the intentionally smaller classes have been effective for supporting student motivation, and they affirm that making beneficial use of time is an important dimension for students pursuing an online education. 3.3 Student Retention Among the most glaring outcomes of the program so far has been high drop-out rates. While internal analyses find that the university’s on-campus programs experience an average 32% drop-out rate measured 3 years after students start their programs, the online mechanical engineering cohorts have matched or exceeded that rate in far shorter time. The 2023 online cohort has seen a 53% drop-out rate in the two years since the students enrolled, while the 2024 cohort has lost 32% of students after just 1 year. For both online cohorts so far, drop-out rates far exceed those of the on-campus mechanical engineering program. While there are likely many factors driving this phenomenon at the individual level, anecdotal evidence suggests that the synchronous instruction is antithetical to the flexible experience that students hoped to find when enrolling in an online program. It is also possible that the promotional materials for the program, especially at its inception, failed to adequately communicate the degree to which the program would operate online while still requiring some on-campus experiences, leading to misaligned student expectations. While efforts have been made to clarify communication about the reality of the program over time, a small number of applicants for the 2025 application cycle still indicated that they understood the “digital” component of the program description to refer to the kind of engineering they would study instead of the format via which they would learn. As a result, each cohort has had several students reject their admissions offer or quickly withdraw after accepting it once they understand the program’s expectations. Moving forward, it could make sense to rebrand the program as an “online” or “hybrid” option instead of “digital” to align with similar, more familiar educational options and to more explicitly inform prospective students of the teaching formats. Table 1: Comparison of Qualifying Exam Scores 2023 Cohort 2024 Cohort A-level Math Exam Average Secondary School Exam Average A-level Math Exam Average Secondary School Exam Average On-Campus 7.05 6.94 7.65 7.80 Online 7.91 7.10 7.62 7.90 An internal analysis from 2019 revealed that students who enroll with lower qualifying exams, especially in math, from their secondary educations tend to drop out at higher rates, which is in line with broader studies of student retention (Krogstrup et al., 2019). Yet within the digital mechanical engineering program, students have on average remarkably similar qualifying exam scores than their oncampus students peers, as seen in Table 1. Further, while low retention is a hallmark of online education that has been discussed for the better part of two decades (Hobson & Puruhito, 2019; Rovai, 2003; Simpson, 2013), prior literature suggests that there are factors that can mitigate student dropouts. The most notable and relevant in this case is a sense of belonging which is also supported by Tinto’s 2017 model of persistence. The synchronous teaching, integrated project work, and oncampus workshops intentionally strive to foster a student community. The head of studies even reports that online students do seem to identify both with belonging to the university and with the program despite their lack of physical proximity, indicating a shared sense of belonging. However, that perception could be reflective of only the students who have persisted in their studies. It has been suggested that the choice of study line to offer as an online education was not made with careful attention to how effectively it could be adapted to an online setting. The necessary education has several hands-on components that require students to engage with tools, instruments, and materials. Currently students are expected to come to campus at certain intervals in order gain the necessary experience in laboratories and workshops, but this further erodes the ideal of a flexible study program. In contrast, other B.Eng. study lines at the university such as software engineering or global business engineering may have been better choices for an online study option since their courses do not require the same use of workshops. 3.4 Knowledge Application, Innovation, & Collaboration As early as the first semester, teachers and educational developers who closely followed the initial implementation of the online program were able to see via the innovative project-based course that students were quickly applying math and physics proficiently in high-level use-cases. Therefore, they were somewhat surprised when students took their first math exam and only 60% of those who attended the exam passed. While this passing rate is comparable to the rate for students who take the course in person, seeing in real time that students were able to use mathematical concepts correctly in context but failed the written exam raised concerns. The math course in question is requirement for all B.Eng. students at the university, and it has historically been more theoretically than application oriented. Further demonstrating that students in the online program are developing engineering competences at a level that meets or exceeds those of their on-campus peers, teachers involved in the online-adapted innovation course have been highly impressed by the work of many online students thus far. Usually, all B.Eng. students at the university take a case-based innovation course in their 5th semester that requires them to work in interdisciplinary teams to develop a solution to a real-world problem for an external company or organization. To incorporate a comparable experience into the online education, an innovation course was developed for their 4th semester. An important difference, however, is that due to the online nature of their studies, the students worked in teams within their cohort instead of in new teams with students from other programs. The success of these mono-disciplinary teams at an earlier point in their studies indicates that those students who have persisted in their studies can develop effective and productive working relationships with one another. The early incorporation of project-based courses in the online program likely also contributed to the students’ abilities to tackle new problems more efficiently. 4 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS As evidenced by the increasing number of applications each year, there is a demand for a more flexible engineering education, and despite its flaws, the online Mechanical Engineering program is working for students who want to learn in this different setting. One student who is now taking electives on campus even noted that there are of course downsides to studying on campus that make them appreciate their online setting more. The restructuring of the curriculum around semester-long projects broke the existing university mould that dictated 5 ECTS courses, and despite the growing pains associated with launching a new program, the curricular innovations should be celebrated for how they used research-based strategies to facilitate a more integrated problem-based approach for engineering education. The university’s online B.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering is still evolving in response to feedback from its students, teachers, and educational developers. While the changes to the curriculum structure make it hard to compare learning outcomes between the online and on-campus students early in their studies, observations thus far indicate that the online students who are committed to the program are acquiring both discipline-based skills and transversal skills at high levels. The first online students will soon be completing their engineering internships where they put their skills to work, and evaluations from the students and site supervisors will lend additional insights into how this online program is preparing future engineers for the workforce. An important challenge to monitoring the success of the progress is the fact that once students disengage with the intention to leave their studies, it is incredibly difficult to get in contact with them to understand what has driven their decision. As a result, it is not yet known which factors are driving the low retention rates and thus whether there are structural aspects of the program that could be changed to be more accommodating. Data collection has commenced to follow the 3rd cohort of online students and gauge their expectations and satisfaction over time. By surveying students over time, we hope to gain insight into factors that students are unsatisfied with before they leave the education. Now that the program is established and receiving more applications each year, the next step is to closely monitor the experience of both students and teachers to develop this program into an opportunity to educate future engineers who simply need a little more flexibility than a traditional program allows in order to thrive in engineering education.