Conceptual design in the cloud: technology use and teamwork under COVID-19

Abstract

COVID-19 brought profound changes to tertiary education, the main one being the need to move from face-to-face training processes to tele-education in a short time. In this context, engineering education experienced a new level of complexity, particularly in contexts of project-based learning environments, where students have to significantly interact with peers and make group decisions. Added to this context, was the long-triggered need by the industry to train engineers capable of dealing with broad, non-technical issues. Hence, the ability to telework has become critical for engineering students, particularly to be able to communicate and make teamwork decisions effectively and efficiently in online environments. In this work, we investigated qualitatively how a group of students responded to the rapid transition from formal classroom teaching to remote learning, particularly in the context of responding with conceptual designs to the requirements of project-based courses. The response of sixty-two Engineering Design students from a chilean technical university is analyzed regarding the usability of the technological tools they used to conceptually solve problems online and how they perceive the teamwork they were able to achieve using these tools.