Engineering Education
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is affecting all disciplines and represents a new way of using technologies that are fusing the physical, digital, and biological worlds. An analysis of possible future applications of artificial intelligence, sensors, and robotics in industries suggests that different technological trends are reshaping the industrial production, in this way demanding a different workforce. This leads to the automation of processes and it demands a workforce with engineers possessing knowledge of disciplines like computing, mechanics, and process management. In this scenario, the main objective of this investigation was to study new ways to educate engineers in two perspectives: in small scale face-to-face education and in large-scale distance education. In both perspectives of small- and large-scale courses, the same discipline with the same lecturer is considered as a way to allow for better comparisons. The chosen discipline is simulation of systems.