Freshman residential schools for undergraduate on-campus and on-line engineering students

By means of evidence-based practice, this paper describes the residential-school component of an accredited online (distance education) undergraduate engineering program in Australia, with
a particular focus on how the residential school program is implemented at freshman year. During these residential schools, activities were organised around the respective engineering courses undertaken by students during the semester. Elements considered suitable and worthwhile for inclusion in residential-school programs included:
• In-person engagement with academic lecturers,
• Practical and laboratory learning activities,
• Presentations and interaction with guest speakers from industry,
• Industry-based site visits,
• Engagement in sole and group-based learning and assessment activities on campus,
and
• Social interaction with other students.
After running pilot residential schools for two years, it was found that a workable format consisted in a two-week residential experience in the first semester, linked to two key freshman courses, Fundamentals of Technology Management, and Engineering Physics. On-campus and
online students’ academic grades were compared for both courses over the years 2005 to 2012.
We found that for physics lab, on-campus students’ grades tended to be higher than those for online students, and vice versa for technology management. We also conclude that when carefully designed, residential schools for online students do enhance learning for both online
students and their on-campus counterparts.