This paper reports a study on the application of an asynchronous model of blended learning to a Master’s programme in the field of Engineering, at the University of the Azores (UAc), a small size higher education institution with 2738 students (Gaspar, 2018), in Portugal.

The supply of courses via distance learning at the UAc has been very scarce. Until 2016, MAPE model (Sousa, 2016; Sousa & Palos, 2018) was applied only to courses included in programmes from the field of Education. Considering that such application has been quite successful, even in difficult contexts, such as courses attended by first-year bachelor students (Sousa, 2018), its extension beyond the field of Education has been tried out since 2016. The present paper examines central aspects of such extension, by reporting a study on how one course from the Master’s programme in Engineering and Management of Water Systems has been re-designed and implemented as a blended learning solution, in light of MAPE model.

MAPE – meaning Modular, Asynchronous, Participative, and Emergent – is inspired by social constructivist theory, inasmuch as it presupposes “the importance of understanding the local context and taking that into consideration when creating new educational resources”, besides requiring “collaborative development procedures” (Willis, 2009, p. 21). It is also inspired by the design-based research paradigm, whereby “researchers manage research processes in collaboration with participants, design and implement interventions systematically to refine and improve initial designs, and ultimately seek to advance both pragmatic and theoretical aims affecting practice”, which means that they “assume the functions of both designers and researchers” (Wang & Hannafin, 2009, p. 394).

In the Azores, attendance of tertiary education is one of the lowest in the European Union. The prospective students of second cycle programmes (Master’s degrees) are mainly fulltime employees, usually with difficulties to reconcile conventional classes with their jobs and family life. Additionally, opportunities for attending higher education in the Azores are unequally distributed among the nine islands of the archipelago, considering that the UAc has campuses in three islands only, and most academic programmes are provided on the main campus.

Comparing Portugal and Spain, as two Iberian countries with ultra-peripheral regions, the total number of students in tertiary education, as a percentage of population aged 20-24, was higher in Spain than in was in Portugal in 2012 (Eurostat, 2014). The Canary Islands (Spain), where 45 to > 60% of students were in tertiary education, contrasted with Azores and Madeira Islands (Portugal), where less than 30% of the students attended tertiary education. The better situation in the Canary Islands could possibly be explained by the use of ICT in universities. In fact, Universidad de Las Palmas at Gran Canaria has systematically implemented the use of ICT in Engineering since 1987, and in 2016/17 started implementing seven Engineering programmes online, which were attended by 2000 students (Álvarez et al., 2017).

The results of an European survey on E-Learning in European Higher Education Institutions showed that the use of e-learning is “particularly frequent” in certain subjects, including engineering and technology, besides business and management, as well as education and teacher training (Gaebel et al., 2014, p. 7). Online learning can improve the competencies of Engineering students, including their writing abilities, considering that writing is critical in online communication (Bourne, Harris & Mayadas, 2005; Moore & May, 2012). For all these reasons, we argue that distance learning should be extended to more programmes within the UAc, thus contributing to increasing the number of students who attend that institution, and helping to rise the qualifications of the Azorean population. Our research question is: can MAPE be implemented in engineering courses?

MAPE model was applied to four courses of the Master’s programme in Engineering and Management of Water Systems. Given the lack of experience of the programme staff in distance education, the challenge of starting to provide some of the courses online can be considered a problem for which no clear solution was available, in the form of guidelines. For this reason, we studied the application of MAPE to this specific context (Engineering Education) by using a methodology inspired in Educational Design Research (Plomp, 2010), which implies collection and analysis of data related to the process of designing an educational intervention and developing it on the basis of a formative assessment of its successive versions or prototypes (Nieveen, 2010). Accordingly, when we collected and analysed data related to the implementation of the first prototype of MAPE in the context of Engineering Education, we considered four dimensions of the model that needed to be evaluated in order to support its development and improvement: content validity, construct validity, practicality, and effectiveness. In order to assess the validity of MAPE, we have relied on expert appraisal. A professor of Engineering Education commented on content validity, by analysing the Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) used by the courses. Comments related to construct validity were made by a professor of Educational Technology. The same professor also made comments related to practicality. A student questionnaire, which has been delivered online, provided data related to practicality and effectiveness, from the students’ perspective. This questionnaire was responded by six students out of eleven. The present paper is based on data from one of the above-mentioned courses: “Treatment Technologies for Small Communities”.

We found that the experience was positive for most of the students: 83% of the respondents stated that they would take the course online, rather than via face-to-face instruction, if they could go back in time and choose. Also 83% of the respondents pointed out that probably they have learned the same, or even more, than they would have learned if they had taken the same course via face-to-face instruction. As expected, the positive aspects that were most frequently mentioned by students were the fact that they could take the course “at home”, and the possibility of reviewing the materials that had been recorded on the VLE “as many times as necessary”. Indeed, such affordances tend to be easily acknowledged as advantages of any VLE. Additionally, respondents valued the fact that the instructor answered students’ questions quickly, and also the possibility of using video to comment on a scientific article in the context of an assignment. The assessment made by experts has pointed out changes that should be introduced to increase the interaction between the instructor and the students: reducing the number of video lectures and, inversely, increasing students’ autonomous work, based on selected readings and exercises. Considering that managing one’s own study time is difficult for some students and that overload of work must be avoided, an important improvement of the VLE, in terms of its construct validity, should consist of estimating the time needed for completing each task, and sharing such information with the students. The findings show that MAPE model has been successfully used as a tool for distance learning in second cycle Engineering programmes. Its possible extension to other programmes looks promising, although, in the specific case of the University of the Azores, much work is still needed in order to achieve this desideratum.

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