2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

As virtual learning continues to evolve following the COVID-19 pandemic, understanding how students collaborate in these environments has become increasingly critical for educators. Research underscores a significant link between peer interactions and collaborative learning outcomes, emphasizing the need for effective virtual collaboration strategies in engineering education. This study examines student learning patterns, collaborative processes, and their impact on learning outcomes in virtual environments through a quantitative survey of 290 students from the College of Engineering at Michigan State University. The survey measured perceptions of engagement and virtual collaboration, focusing on communication methods, interaction patterns, platform usage, and their influence on performance and collaborative effectiveness. The findings revealed that most participants preferred face-to-face communication despite online settings. This emphasizes the importance of physical interactions and highlights the need to improve in virtual collaboration. Students generally reported feeling comfortable, committed, and supported by their peers, fostering a strong sense of community and shared responsibility. However, some students felt like outsiders, which affected their sense of belonging. This research provides valuable insights into how virtual collaboration shapes student engagement and offers guidance for designing effective online engineering education programs.

Keywords: engineering education; virtual learning; virtual design; virtual collaboration; student engagement.