Mechanical Engineering at a Distance: A Review

Abstract

Distance learning has experienced a great development in the last decades due to the advances achieved in the field of information and communication technologies and also because of sociopolitical reasons, being encouraged by governmental policies and offering a chance to people that because of economic, working, geographic or residential reasons would not have any other way to access to university studies. Under these circumstances there has been a huge proliferation of distance education programs all throughout the world and mechanical engineering has not been an exception. The academic offer is not restricted to universities specialized on distance teaching methodologies, such as open universities or distance learning universities, since most universities based on traditional educational methodologies now incorporate distance education on their academic programs. However, it is not frequent to find a mechanical engineering degree where the whole program is based on distance learning. This is primarily due to the need that students develop laboratory practices. Although some mechanical engineering lab practices can be made at home with special kits and virtual or remote labs may be viewed as an alternative, most universities request compulsory stays at their facilities. This is the rationale why it is not very common to include mechanical engineering degrees in the technological academic offer of a lot of universities based only on distance learning. In this work the current status of mechanical engineering education at university level in the frame of distance learning is presented, analyzing its concept and evolution, global presence, methodologies and educational resources.