Competitive Design of Web-Based Courses in Engineering Education - Web-Based Engineering Education: Critical Design and Effective Tools - page 121

requirements and must overpass additional con-
strains than classical, face-to-face courses, like:
virtual collaborative experimentation, interactive
remote approach, collaborative remote learning,
off-line active learning, cross-institutional collab-
oration, remote test and assessment (e.g. Helander
& Emami, 2008; Hutchings, Hadfield, Horvath &
Lewarne, 2007; Jou, Chuang, Wu & Yang, 2008;
Mackey & Ho, 2008; Rizzotti & Burkhart, 2006;
Wang, Dannenhoffer, Davidson & Spector, 2005).
Therefore, a careful and comprehensive planning
is required to design a high-impact web-based
engineering course (Bier & Cornesky, 2001; Brad,
2005; Brad, 2009; Koksal & Egitman, 1998; Ogot
& Okudan, 2008).
These circumstances ask for competitive
design of web-based courses, where competitive
design should be viewed as the implementation
of an optimal framework and the use of adequate
concepts, methods and tools in all aspects that
define the engineering study in order to define,
design and develop, from the very beginning and
in a timeframe required by the educational market
dynamics, of a high-impact engineering course.
In other words, quality must be “designed” within
the course before delivering the course to the
students (Brad, 2005).
This chapter is going to introduce a roadmap
for quality planning and innovation of web-based
engineering courses. The areas of intervention
are firstly highlighted. Then, the methodology
is revealed, together with the challenges in de-
signing and instituting a high-impact web-based
engineering course. The chapter ends with an
exemplification of the approach.

various technical characteristics that define the
performance of an educational product must be
solved without compromises (e.g. time allocated
to prepare the web-based course versus life-cycle
of the web-based course). This necessitates in-
novative problem solving approaches (Altshuller,
2000; Brad, 2005). Basic elements about perfor-
mance planning and innovative problem solving
are further given.

Performance Planning

Performance planning means setting up perfor-
mance expectations towards achieving some goals
(Koksal & Egitman, 1998; Kumar & Labib, 2004;
Popescu, Brad & Popescu, 2006; Suliman, 2006).
For the case of a web-based engineering course, a
result of the planning process is the formulation
and structuring of various data that are afterwards
used to support the conceptualization and synthesis
process of the course. These data include, but are
not limited to, the following:

• A well-structured set of technical charac-

teristics that describes the web-based engi-
neering course (they are also called perfor-
mance metrics);

• Value weights and target values of the

technical characteristics;

• Functions of the web-based engineering

course and their value weights;

• Correlations between various technical

characteristics;

• Relationships between requirements and

technical characteristics, etc.

Technical characteristics are measurable,
quantifiable indicators that altogether reveal the
performance achieved by the web-based engi-
neering course. From this perspective, technical
characteristics can be planned (e.g. levels of per-
formance over the life-cycle, target values, etc.).
Performance can be measured in absolute
terms, by relating the performance of the given

BAckground

Educational product, as any other complex prod-
uct, requires a careful planning in the early stages
of its development (Brier & Cornesky, 2001;
Brad, 2005). Moreover, during the development
phase, a lot of negative correlations between