Designing Virtual Learning Environments for engineering students during COVID-19 pandemic: Development of virtual labs for Heat Transfer

Since March 20, 2020, face-to-face learning in Jalisco, Mexico, was suspended due to the pandemic caused by the spread of SARS-CoV-2. The above immediately jeopardized the completion of school courses. In the following research work, effective learning strategies are presented to address various heat transfer topics for undergraduate students common in some engineering programs in the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara during lockdown restrictions. The goal of this contribution is to design virtual practices to understand heat transfer phenomena using a free access software named Energy2D, and its implementation within a new virtual learning environment. First, to define activities for the practices, learning objectives were defined based on Anderson and Krathwohl's Two-Dimensional taxonomy. Subsequently, the virtual practices were designed to comprehend conduction, convection, and heat radiation phenomena. The didactic strategy was evaluated in groups of Transport Phenomena in the academic terms of 2020-02, 2021-02, and 2021-03 for students of chemical, biotechnology, and food engineering. The application allowed the successful completion of the course during scholar restrictions; also, it provided the introduction to understand basic concepts to students in the use simulation of computer-assisted processes.