Active Blended Learning Engineering Students: A Case Study
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Paper title: Active Blended Learning Engineering Students: A Case Study
Dear author(s),
I have read with much interest your paper titled “Active Blended Learning Engineering Students: A Case Study”. The paper present useful data regarding application of an educational approach based on the combination of blended learning and active learning in engineering education. The title is relevant and informative and the research topic is placed in context and well documented.
However, there are some issues that I noticed could be improved.
Please find below minor points in the communication which needs clarification / reanalysis / rewrites and/or additional information and suggestions for what could be done to improve the paper.
General recommendations
- I suggest a reorganization of the information from the abstract, and, possibly, a reformulation of the paragraphs, for a clearer highlighting of the research method(ology), results, conclusions, further implications.
- I recommend to highlight the research question(s) in the section 1”.3. Research Goal and Scope” (If you agree, this section can be reworded as “Research Goal and question(s)”).
- I recommend to highlight the limitations of the study and further research.
- Also, I recommend to highlight (cite) the bibliographic source consulted for the paragraphs from lines 61-67 and 117-122.
Specific recommendations
Line 24: If you agree, you can add “education” on the title (“New Understanding of Engineering Education”)
Line 64: If you agree, you can abbreviate the “learning management systems” with LMS (even if it no longer appears in the text). The same recommendation is available for “active blended learning” (ABL) from line126-127.
Line 180: If you agree, you can replace “students” with “participants”
Line 224: The table is missing or the legend must be removed.
Line 318-320: I recommend limiting the interpretation of the results obtained from this research. Also, in the Discussions section (paragraph 4.1. Features of the BSC Degree Study), the results obtained in the present research can be compared with "results published over the past decade", without focusing the discussion on the analysis "results published over the past decade".
Lines 325, 354, 360: I recommend to highlight the total number of the participants in the legend (N=?)
Line 349: (Table 3) I recommend to highlight the unit of measurement in the last three columns (BSc, h/MSc, h/ETQ, h)
Line 356: I recommend to mention the number of the (how many) students participated in optional AL activities.
Line 485: I recommend to mention the number of the (how many) students dropped out.
Line 491: I recommend to replace “AC” with “AL”
Author Response
Thank you for your deep appreciation of our research.
Following your recommendations, the paper has been restructured. This mainly concerns Section 1.3, Section 4, and Conclusions.
Section 1.3 was renamed and the research tasks were highlighted there. In Section 4, the limitations and prospects of ABL are shown.
In the paragraphs from lines 61-67 and 117-122, the bibliographic sources are cited.
The title “New Understanding of Engineering Education” was accepted.
The abbreviations LMS and ABL were introduced.
In line 180, “students” were replaced with “participants”.
Formatting of Table 1 was improved.
In 4.1, the results obtained in the present research were restricted and compared with "results published over the past decade".
The total number of the participants for Lines 325, 354, 360 is now given in 2.1.
In the title of Table 3, the units of measurement are indicated.
To indicate the number of the students participated in optional AL activities, an additional row is added to Table 3.
I could not follow your recommendation to mention the number of the students dropped out the EuroTeQ study since these data are still not published by the University.
Of course, AC was replaced with AL.
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors research an attitude to study from the standpoint of students enrolled in different degrees at Tallinn University of Technology. A case study is presented with evaluation of advantages and disadvantages of the blended and active learning approaches from various perspectives.
The paper is easy to follow, a comprehensive literature review is performed with many modern sources cited. The area is relevant, it is increasingly important now to further understand and develop ways of learning for students in the engineering field since the entire approach to engineering and technology is rapidly evolving with time. I enjoyed reading through the paper. The key strength of this paper is that it is nicely structured and paced. The results are well presented.
However, some minor adjustments should be considered to improve the quality of the paper:
- Research score and goal section 1.3 is very brief. Authors describe the research goal to collect the data and present the plan of the paper, but they should also clearly state what they are hoping to achieve through this research.
- In the same section, the authors state that the specific differences of different students’ approaches to study are discussed. However, those differences are only briefly described in section 5 “Conclusion” while it should be presented alongside discussion of the results in section 4 “Discussion”. Perhaps, a table with some comparison criteria should be derived from sections 4.1 – 4.3 in order to better present the analysis of the results.
- Section 5 “Conclusions” briefly discusses differences between different approaches to learning by students belonging to various degree programs. However, as mentioned in my previous point this section in fact continues the previous section, while there is no overall conclusion to the research presented in the paper. Authors should write up a conclusion clearly stating the most important outcomes of the work and outlining directions for future research in that area.
Once this is amended, the paper will be suitable for publication in this journal.
Author Response
Thank you for your deep appreciation of our research.
Following your recommendations, the paper has been restructured. This mainly concerns Section 1.3, Section 4, and Conclusions.
