Journal of Engineering Education Transformations

Abstract

Abstract : Engineering student's absence during the first week of opening of the semester is almost an inevitable social problem. A quasi-experimental study on III semester mechanical-engineering students with a convenient sampling size for the course BTD basic Thermodynamics of VTU is conducted. The objective of the case study is to analyse and evaluate the effectiveness of the multimedia solution approach in solving the social-learning problem. Those who were absent (15) and present (17) are classified under treatment and control group respectively. Control group were taught conventionally and the experimental group were given the content “Basic fundamental concepts” exclusively designed and developed for the case study purpose. A post-test was administered both for the control group and the experimental group. Descriptive statistic (mean, %, sd) and inferential statistic (t-test) is used to analyse the effectiveness of the developed content.The descriptive data analysis (acceptance level 2.1 & 2.3) showed that the developed content was fairly accepted by the experimental group also thought that the contents ware useful (usefulness perception level 2.5 & 2.8) for their course understanding. Multimedia contents in their view helped them in solving thesocial-learning problem of ―course beginning absenteeismǁ. It is interesting to note that the students had a marginal preference to custom built multimedia contents over the open source contents. The t-test reveals that there is no significant different in the post test mean score between treatment group (m = 8) and the control group (m = 12).
Keywords ultimedia, Thermodynamics, : Social learning, MOOCs, h-LMS hybrid- Learning Management system, LMS