2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In recent years, online education has become more commonplace. From the student perspective, asynchronous online courses provide flexibility in learning, allowing students to work at a time convenient for them and at their own preferred pace from almost anywhere in the world. Similar benefits are availed to faculty, who for one reason or another, want to have flexibility in work time and location. From a departmental perspective, particularly for a regional rural university, online courses provide the ability to stay connected to their own students, for instance during a summer semester when engineering students are often working as interns in cities far from the main campus. Lastly, from an administrative perspective, online courses can be used to recruit additional students and transfer students to the program and can increase revenue to the university.

While online courses can have many benefits, many STEM instructors are apprehensive of their use, particularly in courses with labs where students are expected to have hands-on, meaningful interactions with engineering principles and to develop proficiency in experimental data acquisition and analysis. With the expanding availability of powerful AI tools, other instructors question the integrity of student learning in online courses.

The following paper documents creative online assessment strategies used by a civil engineering instructor to mitigate concerns on academic integrity in an engineering mechanics of materials course while increasing student engagement. For example, themed exam problems delivered in the online format have randomized variables for each individual student as compared to similar problems in the face-to-face version of the class using traditional in-class written exams. In addition, the instructor requires video submissions of exam problem solutions from each student to verify his or her identity as well as provide an assessment measure for comprehension.

The Mechanics of Materials course described includes a lab component, in which one of the lab assignments serves as the initial, formative data point for the program’s ABET assessment for Student Outcome 6: an ability to develop and conduct appropriate experimentation, analyze and interpret data, and use engineering judgment to draw conclusions. In many introductory lab courses, students perform prescribed laboratory exercises and do not participate in the development of the lab procedure or the experimental design. The paper documents the instructor’s ideas on how to develop meaningful and organized labs that meet the development aspect of ABET SO 6, including examples used in the face-to-face and online versions of the course.

Lastly, the author provides student performance and feedback from the course. Quantitative data is used to compare grades earned in both modes of delivery. Qualitative feedback is provided, particularly regarding the use of the video submissions in the online format and the effectiveness of the online experiments.