The life of an online engineering student isn’t that different from an on-ground one. Many online classes, heavily mathematical in nature, lend themselves easily to a live or archived lecture followed by a problem set students have to complete independently.

Labs are sometimes more difficult to replicate online, but often students fulfill those with periodic campus visits.

Because the course content translates easily, experts say, engineering schools have had a head start on making an online option available for students. But that doesn’t mean students should settle for programs that aren’t thoughtful about how to turn quality in-person instruction into an equally fulfilling virtual experience.

Here are six questions to ask that may shed light on the quality of instruction in an online engineering graduate program.

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1. How are online faculty chosen? Good online engineering programs should pull from the same faculty base as their residential counterparts and offer as similar an educational experience as possible, says Dale Harris, the executive director of engineering professional education at Purdue University.

At Purdue’s College of Engineering, Harris says, on-campus faculty are as much as possible selected to teach online courses on a volunteer basis. This could even mean that if there’s no suitable instructor for a class that isn’t a requirement, the school may not offer the course online.

“Our assumption is that if the instructor is forced to do it, they’re not going to do as good a job as an instructor who wants to participate in distance instruction,” Harris says.

2. Do professors answer remote questions during live lectures? In many programs, online and in-person students may be watching faculty lectures simultaneously, with one set viewing via live streaming and the other by sitting in the classroom.

Ideally, both sets of students should be able to participate in real-time discussion and/or ask questions, says Kelly Goulis, senior associate dean for graduate and professional programs at the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering. This can depend a bit on a professor’s teaching style, as well as the range of options students may have for responding to or asking questions of a lecturer, she adds.

“If the professor is engaging and there is value in watching the class live, then the students will do it, and they’ll participate, and some of them will do it religiously,” Goulis says.

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3. Is the school a research institution? At schools where faculty are evaluated heavily on the research they generate, it may be tougher to convince qualified instructors to willfully add an online section of a course to their workload, says Ed Borbely, director of the integrative systems and design division at the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering.

This doesn’t automatically mean all research universities won’t have enough quality online faculty. But they may need to proactively recruit faculty and sell the benefits of online instruction, including how technological capabilities can enhance some teaching strategies, he says.

“Once they see the resources we can put at their disposal, we usually get them excited enough to continue to do more,” Borbely says.

4. How experienced are instructors in an online setting? Many schools offer a variety of professional development opportunities to help faculty members transition to an online setting. That’s no substitute for familiarity, however, says Darryll Pines, dean of the University of Maryland–College Park’s Clark School of Engineering.

Regardless of how much professional development a professor receives before transitioning to an online environment, his or her third time teaching the course online is likely to be a better experience for students than the first, he says.

5. How responsive are faculty to email and phone calls? Because many engineering courses involve complex mathematical problem-solving, one of the best traits an online professor can have is to be easily reachable while a student is working through a problem set, says Harris with Purdue. It may also be helpful to share student questions and faculty answers electronically with the rest of the class, he says.

“Handling the back and forth with distance students, you can’t just do it haphazardly to do a good job of it,” says Harris. “If a student asks a question and it seems like it’s a question that could come from everybody, then you not only answer the question for that student, but you distribute the email to the whole class with the question and the answer.”

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6. Do faculty work with instructional designers? Michigan’s integrative systems and design division has hired two instructional designers to consult with faculty as part of it’s effort to improve online courses, Borbely says. While he agrees that the translation of on-campus teaching into an online format is an easier transition in engineering than in other fields, he says instructional designers have helped faculty understand the switch does not have to result in a dumbed-down version of a course.

Some faculty have also been swayed to make subtle changes to their online teaching approach.

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6 Questions to Ask About Faculty in an Online Graduate Engineering Program originally appeared on usnews.com