Full scale experiences with didactic changes in distance education in Master of Industrial Information Technology (MII)

This paper reports the main results of didactic changes in the first year of an experiment in ICT-based distance learning. The results are based on a full scale experiment in the education, Master of Industrial Information Technology (MII). The experiment transforming the well functioning on-campus engineering program based on project organized collaborative learning to the technology supported distance education program failed. Despite of many miner didactic changes, we did not obtain the same self regulating learning effect in the group work among the off-campus students as is the case for on-campus students. For the first time, we have deviated from the normal Aalborg University problem based learning model by separating course study and project work. The feedback from the students was very positive but we did expect that the collaboration and discussion on the Internet would increase as well. Questionnaires, discussions and measurements of the Internet activities show results which are contradictory compared to expectations.