[December 18, 2013]

NCKU Professor Uses E-Learning Platform to Reform Teaching Methodology

Dr. Huei-Huang Lee, a professor from the Department of Engineering Science at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) has used the university's online e-learning system Moodle to share knowledge and learning experience and to discuss what the students can learn in the course.

Lee uses resources online alongside the university's e-learning platform, commonly known as the Moodle system, to host discussions and debates with students outside the classroom.

"The freedom enjoyed by students in the internet world has led to remarkable learning performance among students," according to Lee.

Each week, Lee assigns a chapter to the students to read and prepare, and a discussion forum wil be set up for the class discussion.

He said that, in the discussion forum, the students may pose their questions, answer other students' questions, or share their comments.

"In addition to taking part in the discussion, I rate each posted article with 1-5 stars. The sum of the ratings becomes the grade of a student's performance for that week," Lee added.

Lee noticed that students not only feel comfortable to pose questions on the forum but also enjoy helping other students or sharing their comments with others.

Lee began experimenting with this teaching method in his "Computer Aided Engineering (CAE)" graduate course since 2010.

Approximately 50 students would take this course annually, where each of them has to submit a 300-500 word short article.

Lee revealed his insight in teaching and said that the conventional curricula rely too much on mathematics to teach the concepts of engineering mechanics.

For students good at engineering thinking but not good at mathematical thinking, using graphics-based CAE tools is often a better way to reduce the dependency on mathematics by a substantial extent.

"Although sometimes the discussions will deviate from the main topic of the course, such discussions provide a good chance for among students," Dr. Lee said.

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