The laboratory instruction sheet (sometimes called a laboratory manual), together with the equipment used by students, is an essential resource for laboratory work. It has a direct influence over all the interactions that can occur in the laboratory activity, of which studentequipment is the only common synchronous interaction in both face-to-face and remote-access laboratories. This article offers a student perspective on the function, utility, and importance of laboratory instruction sheets in Engineering along with their preferred design for both face-toface and remote modes. Both qualitative and quantitative investigations were made for studying students' perceptions. The laboratory sheet was found to be a contributing factor to student satisfaction for student-equipment interactions in face-to-face laboratories and important to students' experience in remote-access laboratories in giving them a feel of operating real equipment. Student responses indicated that the instruction sheet should meet different content requirements and emphases that depend upon the laboratory mode and different levels of student academic achievement.
Today, learning in the engineering laboratory takes place via face-to-face and distance modes, the latter via the internet. Learning of laboratory skills in any mode of laboratory is influenced by the interactions that occur between the students, instructors and the equipment in the laboratory. Recent innovations have focused on developing new remotely controlled laboratories for various disciplines in engineering studies. These laboratories focus purely on technical aspects and may struggle to provide an environment for the development of personal and professional skills that are also a critical part of an engineering student's education. In this research, quantitative and qualitative surveys were conducted at two Australian institutions to measure first-year students' interactions and capturing their experience in these two contrasting laboratory modes. Quantitative survey data showed that students were more satisfied and valued social interactions more in the remotely controlled laboratory than in the face-to-face laboratory. By contrast qualitative responses revealed that their first preference was still face-to-face laboratories because they valued the importance of gaining hands-on experience of the experiment, working in teams and under an instructor's guidance as an engineering student. Students also preferred remote laboratory work to be introduced at a later stage in their engineering studies when they are conceptually more capable and experienced.
Engineering degree programs include a significant amount of practical work for which national accrediting bodies stipulate a set of laboratory-learning outcomes. This paper sets out to understand how students' interactions in the laboratory contribute to the attainment of laboratory-learning outcomes. The investigation was conducted in the traditional face-to-face laboratory mode. Results from surveys of final-year students and instructors are reported.Students' and instructors' perspectives of the relative importance of four main types of student interaction to meet each of the Engineers Australia laboratory-learning outcomes are also presented. Students primarily expected to interact with instructors more than with students (directly or through observation of interactions) or equipment for their achievement of the learning outcomes, whereas instructors reported that all of the interactions are important to achieve the learning outcomes.
Learning objectives are important as they provide direction to teaching staff towards what content should be taught, what activities should be undertaken and what assessments are to be used to confirm understanding. Two decades ago, the evolution of new learning modes such as recorded, remote, and simulation/virtual started the research process to define and better understand learning objectives in the teaching laboratory. Much is still to be learnt about laboratory learning objectives including which are most important, and if what is deemed important is universal. For example, do academics in Europe and Australasia align in which objectives are most important and which are not? To answer this question, European and Australasian engineering academics were asked to rank laboratory objectives across the cognitive, psychomotor, and affective domain using a predefined tool called Laboratory Learning Objectives Measurement. A total of 113 academics from Australasia and 25 from Europe responded to the survey. A statistical analysis was conducted to compare the rankings. The findings from this survey show that substantial alignment occurs across the cognitive and psychomotor domains but differs across the affective domain.
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