Dartmouth Team Earns Distinguished Team Award for Online Engineering Innovation

Comprised of online education, learning design, computing, and admissions marketing staff from Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, the group played a pivotal role in designing and developing the online MEng degree, which launched in 2023. Offered in partnership with Coursera, the program focuses on the hardware dimensions of artificial intelligence.

In the lead-up to the launch, the team navigated the challenges of building an online learning experience that blended asynchronous lectures with hands-on, project-based learning. Central to the effort was ensuring the degree retained the academic rigor of Dartmouth courses while providing opportunities for collaboration and one-on-one faculty support across multiple time zones.

"From the outset, this team recognized the complexity of this type of collaboration and worked to create systems, communication channels, and solutions that collectively addressed the needs of designing and developing the online master of engineering degree," said Erin DeSilva, Senior Associate Provost for Learning Innovation at Dartmouth. DeSilva, along with Thayer's Senior Director of Computing Services Mark Franklin, nominated the group for the award.

The team worked closely with engineering faculty and partners at Coursera to develop interactive and high-touch online learning experiences. A defining feature of the program is the integration of hardware kits shipped directly to students' homes, enabling practical, project-based learning in a fully online environment. The inaugural cohort of online MEng students will graduate this June.

The winning team includes: Thayer's Zofia Gadjos, director of online education; Ken Watson, online education program manager; Bethany Iyobe, online academic program manager; Ben Dobbins, senior content developer; Sarah Gagne, admissions and strategic enrollment director; and Nathan Carlson, systems engineer; as well as Dartmouth's Megan Tucker, lead learning designer; and Tony Sindelar, learning designer.

"Through the team's extraordinary and still ongoing collaboration, the online MEng has become a program that is unmistakably Dartmouth," said Douglas Van Citters, Thayer's interim dean. "The team's efforts have helped Dartmouth expand access to advanced AI and hardware engineering training to more people and set new standards for innovation in online engineering education."

The NERCOMP award honors outstanding collaboration among member institutions and recognizes teams that have made a measurable impact on a specific challenge through inclusive practices, innovative approaches, and forward-looking applications of learning. The award will be presented at NERCOMP's annual conference in March.