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Developing an online course for marine engineering

Article in Scientific Bulletin of Naval Academy · July 2020

DOI: 10.21279/1454-864X-20-I1-040

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 Developing an online course for marine engineering
Alina Balagiu¹ and Corina Sandiuc²
¹Associate Professor PhD, “Mircea cel Batran” Naval Academy, no 1, Fulgerului street,
Constanta, Romania
²Senior Lecturer, “Mircea cel Batran” Naval Academy, no 1, Fulgerului street, Constanta,
Romania
[email protected], [email protected]

Abstract. Developing an English Academic Online Course for engineering is a complicated

endeavor. The ultimate goal of any teacher or professor is to make the students learn circadian and
consciously in order to remember the theory and to be able to apply it in the future job.
Assessment of every progress of the student is almost impossible during a traditional course,
taking into account the fact that the groups of students are quite large and the course or the seminar
time is limited. Starting from these premises we have tried to develop an online course that gives
the professor the opportunity to check, by means of computer, every progress in learning
terminology in a foreign language. The structure of the course and the levels of learning are
described in the paper.

Keywords: online course; ESP; material design; marine engineering

1. Introduction

As it has been stated in the specialty literature, the scarcity of the ESP materials for courses and
seminars determines the Academic staff to create units for students of different specialties. This
reason made us develop units for Marine Electrical Engineering with about the same structure: text
followed by reading comprehension questions, vocabulary or terminology, and grammar or general
vocabulary or speaking topics. The evaluation for the material was done in the traditional format of
written test papers comprising the same general structure. The course itself has been validated for a
couple of years, so that an online course with the same structure seemed to be the next logical step.

The online courses started to be developed in the 1990s (Jiang 1998) due to the existence of new
technology in computers and especially internet. Research papers including recommendations for
developing online courses were written starting with the first decade of the 21 st century (Pollacia
2001). At the same time began the debates of researchers upon the benefits and drawbacks of teaching
and learning using online courses ((Beynon, 2007; Clark, 2001; Kozma, 2001; Cavanaugh 2005).
New developments in learning theories have been implemented from 2009-2010, when massive open
online courses (MOOCs) started as ultimate way of using the technology for independent courses that
could be used as they are or adapted to the necessities of teaching.

The experience gained in developing this online English course to be used for Marine Electrical
Engineering might be beneficial to other university staff due to the fact that it is a way of
continuously assessing learning and progress of students and above all it is a modality of “forcing”
our students, in a subtle and pleasant way, to learn both specialty in English, which is important for
their future job as engineers either at sea or on land, and elements of everyday vocabulary and
grammar structures that are necessary in communication onboard ships with the multinational crews.
2. The structure of the course
2.1. The traditional course

The online course developed for marine engineering electrical specialty is based on a face to face
student-centered course. For the traditional course the student was supposed to follow each step in the
same pace with his mates, although the English knowledge levels were different. The same structure
is used for all units.

The first part is an original specialty text that is used in traditional class for practicing reading skill
followed by tasks or exercises for reading comprehension. Besides reading aloud some paragraphs
and practicing the listening skill by being exposed to different types of pronunciation, the student
should implicitly have to be exposed to the specific terminology and language structures from the
context.

The second stage is the terminology itself that is selected from the text and translated into Romanian
(in this specific case). There is also a part of terminology based on symbols that should be memorized
by the students as being essential for the future job. The terminology should be read, understood and
memorized by the students in order to be assessed through the tests given after three or four units. It
was proved by the tests results that most of the students did not learn consciously so that at the end of
the course they did not have the knowledge to be used in the next year of study and during the
onboard training period.

The third part of the course is the grammar or general vocabulary part that should help students to get
fluent and accurate in speaking. This stage includes verb tenses grammar review exercises and
speaking structures to be rehearsed by means of exercises. The theory and the exercises used to be
done in class, so that all students could participate and get familiar with the structures that were
assessed in the test papers. Again the students proved not to master the grammar and general
vocabulary knowledge as long as about 75% could not do the exercises correctly.

2.2. The online course

The online course is based on the above mentioned face to face course, with the same ten units
division, the same structure for every unit, and the possibility for each unit to be studied and learned
from home. For every stage of the course there is an assessment test that can be done five times, and
at the same time the students can have access to the notes they made or the written course. The final
grade is given by the last attempt, which is not necessarily the best attempt. There will be a maximum
of 15 attempts for one course, which implies either challenging the student’s memory every time for a
better score or the student going through the materials and/or notes five times, if necessary.

2.2.1. Knowledge and symbols

For the first part, the text, there is an assessment test made up of about 10 items for the knowledge,
based on reading, to which we have added 5 or 6 items for the electrical symbols. The knowledge
items can be of different types:

 Questions with multiple answers – to select one; to select the wrong one; to select for a
number on a picture;
 Questions with two answers – to select one;
 Match exercises - numbered parts of images from the unit to be matched with the names of
those parts;
  True/ false statements;
 Fill in with multiple choice;
 Select words or phrases from a list;
 Multiple choice answer with one, two, three or all correct answers.

The symbols items, also included in the first assessment of each unit have less types of exercises
because there are usually between minimum seven and maximum seventeen symbols per unit, making
difficult a larger choice of item types. About 75% of the questions include images of the electric
mechanic or automation symbols in different ways. They are all multiple choice questions of the
following types:

 What is the meaning of the following symbol?

 What is the name of the following symbol?
 What is the symbol for………?
 Which of the following symbols is ………….?
 Which of the following symbols represents……….?
 Which of the symbols have the following meaning……….?
 The meaning of the symbol is…….. What is its component name?
 Which is NOT the symbol for a………..?
 Which symbol has the following meaning?

2.2.2. Vocabulary or terminology

The second part of the course is intrinsically connected to the first one, and consists in learning and
eventually memorizing the vocabulary or the terminology that is the fundament of any ESP course.
Most of the students have contact with the electrical terminology in English for the first time.
Although they are already used to Romanian terms, it is very important for them to master the English
terminology as long as most of them are going to work on ships as part of multinational crews.

The significant gain of the online course is the fact that they can actually see at least one picture of
the electrical systems, circuits, machinery and panels and structures containing these onboard ships
and ashore. For the verbs and phrases that cannot be illustrated the exercises are made in order to help
the students understand the difference between the meaning of these items in general conversation
and in their specific terminology. The assessment comprises 20-25 questions, mainly multiple choice
of different types:

 The Romanian phrase “_____________” can be translated into English as:

 The English phrase “____________” can be translated into Romanian as:
 Which picture illustrates a _____________?
 The phrase “___________” means: (sometimes there can be more correct answers)
 The abbreviation “______________” means:
 Provide the correct phrase for the following definition:___________________
 Which definition describes the word “______________” from the engineering terminology?
 The image represents:
 Choose the best translation for the following Romanian phrase:________________
There are also matching exercises for pictures and drawings:
  What are the component parts of the following picture?
2.2.3. Grammar and topics for conversation
The third part of the course is grammar and general vocabulary for usual conversation. The first four
units are designated for review of tenses, each unit for a tense present, past and future and the fourth
unit is a review all tenses. Starting with unit 5 this part of the course is designed to help students
speaking in different situations such as: requesting, inviting, suggesting, apologizing, thanking,
making excuses, giving opinions, agreeing and disagreeing, etc.
The exercises for the assessment are of different types and usually there are 15 items. They are fill in,
multiple choice, tense recognition with multiple choice, drag and drop, match (two halves of the
sentence), match a sentence with a situation, listening and writing, rephrase (multiple choice),
rephrase (fill in),etc.

2.2.4. Testing

At the end of every unit there is a test made up of around thirty-five items. Out of these 43% is
represented by grammar and conversation topics, about 28.5% is represented by vocabulary and
28.5% is represented by knowledge and symbols. There are also some new questions or items,
minimum 2 and maximum 10 for each distinct part of the test.

There is also a term test that sums up questions for grammar, vocabulary and knowledge and symbols
from each unit and also some new items or questions but not more that 2 or three for each unit. The
highest percentage is given to the vocabulary that has 4 questions for a unit, while the knowledge and
grammar have only 3 questions or items. In this way we try to reach the goals of the English teacher,
terminology and grammar or general vocabulary.

Besides the term test, speaking skill is tested by means of a PowerPoint presentation. The students
have to prove that they gained the tools for communicating about a specialty topic. The presentation
is made in groups of four and it can be sustained video online in special circumstances.

3. Conclusion

There are some specific traits of this online course that makes it different from the MOOC trend. First
of all the assessments or tests can be dealt with from home or work using any device, the only
condition is not to change the device you have started working on. The tests can be done in class or at
home but the students have only one try.

The students can learn and work on assessments at their own pace and when their biorhythm permits
them to give the best results. They can try an assessment then go back to the course and try it again
until the desired percent is attained. The process of reading the course several times or at least twice
leads to learning and memorizing words, phrases, specific terminology, names of symbols, etc.

As we mentioned above one of the most important gains for the students is the fact that they can
visualize the systems, circuits, devices and machineries they will work with and can make the
connection between the English word or phrase and the image. The students seem to appreciate the
independence of learning and the objectivity of the assessments. They need to work in order to get
marks for each unit, consequently the process of learning is continuous and somehow willingly done.
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