Modernizing Petroleum Engineering Education: A New Global Online Petroleum Engineering University Serving all Universities

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents an initiative to establish an online petroleum engineering educational resource that provides electronic learning to universities to enhance the learning experience of students and address many of the challenges and ambitions of petroleum engineering programs worldwide. In recent years there has been much discussion of the difficulty in recruiting quality petroleum engineering faculty. A confluence of industry and demographic circumstances has resulted in petroleum engineering programs with very high enrollment levels and excessive student-faculty ratios, leading to a diminished learning experience for students. The way today's students process information is fundamentally different from previous generations, yet in most cases academia continues to teach them as they always have. Progressive universities are striving to adapt their models to the changing learning styles of their student bodies, while trying to leverage technology as best as possible. To address these issues, an online resource is being established that will allow students from different universities to access electronic learning that will complement the instructor-led training that currently exists. Electronic learning is well suited to academic learning, where the focus is on fundamental theory and concepts in addition to the basic application of these concepts. This paper provides details on how this resource has been developed and how it will be implemented. A significant portion of undergraduate petroleum engineering education can be covered by innovative electronic learning, allowing faculty to focus on problem-solving while spending fewer hours in the classroom. By soliciting corporate support from industry to support the centralized resource, individual universities will have cost-effective access to a resource that will enhance the educational process by catering to the learning styles of this generation, alleviate some of the challenges faced due to faculty shortages, and progress petroleum engineering university learning farther into the modern digital era.