EGT Goes On-Line with Web-CT!
Starting with the 2005 Fall semester, the EGT Department began to put classes on-line using a tool called Web-CT. Web-CT is a secure web-based environment that is designed to provide college students with a method to take advantage of the power of the internet to make taking a class much more efficient, flexible and convenient. In the EGT program, Web-CT will allow each course to have the following educational components:
- Course lectures are available thru Web-CT. These take the form of Power Point slide shows and/or videos from the instructor.
- Assignments , Quizzes and Tests will be available to the student thru Web-CT. The instructor will post them at the appropriate times.
- Communication tools will allow all of the class participants to post messages, either publicly to all of the class, or privately to one person.
- A full calendar is available in which the instructor will post the schedule for the entire semester.
- Under Student Profile you can check your grades at any time after they are posted by the instructor.
- Course Information is an area in which you can access the course syllabus, read all about your instructor, and see an introduction to the course.
As a student registered in an EGT course, you be given a username and a password in order to log into Web-CT and gain access to your courses. You can access this from any computer that has a high-speed internet link. This means you can work on your course from home, from work, or from the computer labs in the EGT Department.
Think of the new convenience and flexibility compared to the traditional methods of taking a class! But, because we understand what it takes to become a successful student, most of the courses will be offered as hybrid courses. What is a hybrid course? This is a course in which the Web-CT is used as one component of the course. The other component is the traditional class meeting that occurs with your fellow students and the instructor in the class room. A hybrid course uses both the on-line and the in-class components to provide the best features and benefits of both environments. Face-to-face interaction between the instructor and the students is a vital part of the educational process in an engineering technology curriculum. This is especially true where you have labs involved in a course.
That being said, let's talk about some of the 200-level courses in the EGT program that are offered only one time per year. Under the traditional system, if the course was offered during the day, and your job had you working during the day there was a problem for you in taking the course. The same problem existed if the course was offered at night and your job was on 2 nd shift. Now, with Web-CT and the hybrid arrangement, you now have a method to work your job and take the course at the same time! In the long run, we plan to make the traditional concept of day and night classes obsolete. How can we do that? Well, imagine a course in which the lecture portion of the class in on-line, but the lab portion of the class is traditional. There would be one day-time lab per week and one night-time lab per week. In that scenario, you would simply work on-line for the lecture, and then come to which ever lab is convenient during the week. This scenario is not in place at this time. However, our plan is to push the envelope as far as we can without sacrificing quality and success for the students.
There are two key ingredients for success in leveraging Web-CT in the EGT program to the maximum benefit. The first is the quality of the Web-CT component. As the faculty, that is our responsibility. We are already getting feedback from students so that improvement can be incorporated into the Web-CT component. As such, this is a continuous quality improvement process. The second key ingredient is the self-discipline of the students. If you fall into the trap of procrastination, you will fall flat on your face and not succeed in the course. If the course is a 5 contact hour class, then, you must put in at least 5 hours a week on the course to get all of the work done. As the faculty, we are not going water-down anything, or back down on the amount of student work in the course! The objectives and outcomes of each EGT course will remain the same as always. The purpose of Web-CT is to allow the EGT program to become up-to-date with current technology and to add flexibility, convenience and quality.
The listing below shows which EGT courses have already been moved into Web-CT and what the proposed schedule is for the rest.
Course |
Description |
Semester |
| EGT 245 | Principles of Parametric Design - CATIA V5 | Fall 2005 |
| EGT 210 | Engineering Graphics III | Fall 2005 |
| EGT 220 | Structural Steel & Piping Applications | Spring 2006 |
| EGR 275 | Introduction To Computer Graphics - AutoCAD | Spring 2006 |
| EGR 175 | Manufacturing Processes | Spring 2006 |
| EGT 119 | Geometrics | Summer 2006 |
| EGT 215 | Mechanical Drawing Applications | Fall 2006 |
| EGT 110 | Technical Drawing I | Fall 2006 |
| EGT 115 | Technical Drawing II | Spring 2007 |
| EGT 152 | Fundamentals of CAD Solid Works I | Spring 2007 |
| EGT 127 | Descriptive Geometry | Summer 2007 |
| EGT 252 | Advanced CAD Solid Works II | Fall 2007 |
Our main priority is to always be looking for ways to continuously improve the quality of the EGT program, here at Greenville Tech. We believe that Web-CT is a great opportunity to make that happen. If you have any comments or questions, please contact the department head or faculty.