Challenges in teaching modeling and simulation online

Author

Balci, Osman ; Deater-Deckard, Kirby ; Norton, Alan

Author_Institution

Depts. of Comput. Sci., Virginia Polytech. Inst. & State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA, USA

fYear

2013

fDate

8-11 Dec. 2013

Firstpage

3568

Lastpage

3575

Abstract

With the emergence of free Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), online education has been in the headlines in recent years. Many universities are offering online courses, some free and some for pay tied to a degree program. However, the lack of sufficient quality in existing online courses is undeniable. In particular, teaching Modeling and Simulation (M&S) as an undergraduate or graduate-level online course poses significant technical challenges for instructors. This paper presents an online learning quality model and discusses such challenges by giving the first author´s own free online M&S courseware as an example. The quality model presented provides guidelines for the development of any online course.

Keywords

computer science education; courseware; digital simulation; educational courses; educational institutions; teaching; M&S courseware; MOOC; degree program; graduate-level online course; massive open online courses; modeling and simulation; online education; online learning quality model; online simulation; teaching; universities; Computational modeling; Computers; Educational institutions; Internet; Mathematical model; Software;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Simulation Conference (WSC), 2013 Winter

Conference_Location

Washington, DC

Print_ISBN

978-1-4799-2077-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/WSC.2013.6721718

Filename

6721718