Online Engineering Education Using Blackboard Collaborate

On average, students in online learning conditions perform modestly better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.Blackboard Collaborate was used for live online lectures for mechanical engineering students that enrolled in a face-to-face machine analysis course.At the end of the class, the students were given a survey to assess their attitudes and opinions about using Collaborate.All the students found it easy to use and access; however, the top students generally report a greater level of satisfaction with using Collaborate than the bottom students.In addition, the top students reported a greater comfort and ease with online participation and a better selfreported learning outcome than the bottom students did.