Enhancement Of A Core Electrical Engineering Course Using Web Ct

WebCT was used to enhance an electrical engineering survey course at the United States Naval Academy. WebCT is a suite of HTML based course tools which can be used to provide Web based content. It is a commercial product created at the University of British Colombia. The course authoring tools are free to download and use. A modest fee is paid to site license it for student use. The course in which it was used is the second in a two semester sequence taken by Juniors and Seniors in non-electrical engineering majors. The second course emphasizes applications, while the first course emphasizes basics such as DC and AC circuit theory. One objective of each course is for students to acquire the ability to answer conceptual and short answer questions. Short answer questions are a significant component of each hour exam. WebCT was used to help students learn short answer material through the use of on-line, multiple choice quizzes. Quizzes on computational material were used in a mastery learning mode. WebCT allows quizzes to be taken multiple times. Each time a quiz is taken, the component values can be varied. This allowed students to make mistakes, go back and ask questions or review the text and then retake the quiz for a better score. Student reaction to this use of WebCT was positive.