Improving our approach towards teaching a content intensive subject in higher education - An on-line variant

The authors carried out a study and published the results on teaching a largely content intensive course in an engineering school, where it is often a challenge to achieve student learning and retention of the course material.Methodologies involved encouraging student notetaking, a study guide sheet to follow along with the PowerPoint, homework built to serve as a study aid, weekly quiz, and a comprehensive final exam, as well as a research paper.An additional challenge in last year's course was added when the course went on-line in the middle of the semester.To accommodate this on-line crisis, recordings of each lecture were added.At the end of the course, the students were given a survey to evaluate the effectiveness of these methodologies.Based on the survey results and student performance, the text for the course was changed which then required significant modification our course materials.This year the course is only on-line for the entire semester.With the textbook changed, study guide sheet was made more focused, homework was revised and shortened somewhat, quizzes were modified to comply with on-line testing available, recorded lectures were uploaded onto the Brightspace, and an additional project was added.The students were given a mid-semester survey to evaluate the effectiveness of these modifications to that point, and some course tweaks have been instituted.We are sharing with reader what we have been able to do and how our students have reacted.What worked well, what could be improved further, and why, are then discussed in this paper.