Visible Learning and synchronous online lesson in higher education: a study in engineering education

ABSTRACT

The Visible Learning (VL) approach to learning processes stems from Hattie’s work based on synthesising meta-analyses regarding achievement in education. Although the model is used at many levels of instruction, its performance has been less studied in higher education, engineering education, and in the context of synchronous online learning in distance education. This study implements VL features and analyzes their ability to improve learning outcomes and teaching quality. To this end, a synchronous online lesson in a Fluid Dynamics course was implemented with 39 mechanical engineering students. The research method is a one-group pretest-posttest design and data were collected through a test and a 5-point Likert scale questionnaire. The learning achievement is measured using Cohen's d. The relevant effect size value obtained (d = 2.32) stands out from those in the literature where meta-meta-analyses report an impact on learning close to that of a traditional lecture (d = 0.08). Regarding the learning experience, students’ ratings of both the lesson and the teacher's teaching quality are clearly positive. It can be concluded that the VL approach can produce significant learning gains and positive perceptions of instructional quality among students in the context of synchronous online instruction in engineering education.

KEYWORDS:

• Visible Learning
• higher education
• synchronous online learning
• distance education
• engineering education

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank:

Honorary Laureate Professor John Hattie from the Melbourne Graduate School of Education (Australia) for his contribution to the scientific improvement of this article.

Prof. Giovanni Di Nicola from UNIVPM (Italy) for his contribution to the development and the materialisation of this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gabriele Bertozzi

Gabriele Bertozzi, PhD student in “Innovative Didactics” within the Industrial Plants Department at the “Università Politecnica delle Marche”, graduated at the University of Urbino (Italy) in “Foreign literatures and languages with a specialization in glottodidactics” (1997), and in “Education Sciences” (2006). He received Master’s degrees in “Teaching methods and training processes”, and in “Educational Psychology in teaching”. With his research committed to test, adapt and develop new evidence based teaching/learning strategies in higher education, he published papers in international journals and conference proceedings.

Claudia Paciarotti

Claudia Paciarotti, PhD, full time researcher in Industrial Plants at the “Università Politecnica delle Marche”, graduated in 2004 in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Ancona, Italy. Her research activity mainly deals with logistic, short food supply chain, emergency management, design and management aspects of in hospitals and health corporations, process management and reengineering in healthcare and third sector. She is the author of papers that have been published in national and international journals and conference proceedings.

Andrea Crivellini

Andrea Crivellini is graduated in Mechanical Engineering in 1997 at the University of Ancona and in 2003 he discussed his PhD thesis at the Polytechnic University of Bari. In 2005 he took an assistant professor position at the University of Bergamo, while in 2008 he moved at Polytechnic University of Marche, where, in 2018, he became Associate Professor. Since the beginning of his research activity, he worked in the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) field with particular emphasis on the development of a high-order Discontinuous Galerkin CFD solver. He is author of papers published in international journals and conference proceedings