2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

WIP: Application of FLASH to Forecast Student Engagement in Online Engineering Courses

Student engagement is a critical factor in online education, influencing both learning outcomes and retention rates. In online environments, students often face challenges such as lack of interactions, which can lead to disengagement and higher dropout rates. Engagement serves as a bridge between students and their learning materials, fostering active participation, deeper understanding, and sustained motivation. This is particularly crucial in engineering courses, where complex concepts require continuous interaction and application.
This research presents the application of the Forecasting Learning Achievement with Survival History (FLASH) methodology to predict student engagement and success in online engineering education, specifically focusing on thermodynamics and fluid mechanics courses. By utilizing Survival Analysis (SA) techniques, the study aims to identify key engagement factors and forecast academic outcomes, providing a framework for enhancing student retention. Survival Analysis (SA) serves as the core methodology of this research, involving the definition of key parameters such as the survival variable, which in this case refers to the likelihood of student persistence or success throughout the course. The treatment is the specific learning intervention applied in this study, the use of Virtual Environments (VEs). The time interval is defined by the duration of student participation in the course, during which engagement is monitored at multiple milestones.
In this research, the virtual environment (VE) is the selected treatment to enhance student engagement. While various treatments can be employed to boost engagement, such as interactive discussions, team-based projects, and traditional engineering assignments, this study specifically focuses on VEs. VEs offer immersive, interactive spaces that simulate real-world engineering challenges, providing students with opportunities to apply theoretical concepts in a dynamic and engaging context. The study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of this treatment compared to more traditional methods, with a particular focus on its impact on students' cognitive, psycho-motor, and affective skills.
The integration of Virtual Environments (VEs) serves as a comparative tool to traditional learning activities, aligning with the New Engineering Educators (NEE) division’s focus on innovative educational strategies and tools for faculty development, contributing to the long-term sustainability of engineering education.