Using online and multimedia resources to enhance the student learning experience in a telecommunications laboratory within an Australian university

Abstract

A laboratory component of an undergraduate telecommunications course consistently scored poorly for student learning experience on student surveys at an Australian university. Consultation with experienced academic staff revealed the need to modify the teaching resources available for the laboratory to include webbased multimedia and interactive resources. This new material was developed and made available to students and teaching staff in early 2011 via an Australian university e-learning package which was used to deliver the subject. The students and demonstrators were then encouraged to use this new resource to prepare for the three hour laboratory sessions. Surveys of students who took this laboratory in previous years were then compared to surveys of students using the latest version of the telecommunications laboratory in 2011 and 2012. The demonstrators themselves were also asked to provide feedback on their impressions of student learning. The comments from the laboratory demonstrators, feedback from the students, and assessment results indicate that the new online teaching material for both laboratory teaching staff and students has signifi cantly improved the student learning experience. That this occurred two years in a row indicates that this improvement has ongoing benefi ts, irrespective of the teaching staff involved with the subject. The lessons learned can be applied to other similar learning environments.

Understanding How Students Use and Appreciate Online Resources in the Teaching Laboratory

“…In 2014 a quantitative study was undertaken to understand how students used the resource and what relationship this had with the student experience. The results of the study supported the findings in [1,14] that supportive online resources can have a large positive impact on student learning and the student experience. Students using such resources are more productive in the laboratory and are more focused on the learning objectives of the experiment.…”

“…These figures are well correlated with the amount of resources a student might need to use from the Training Laboratory. This data also provides support to the claims made in [1,14] that found online and multimedia resources in the laboratory can significantly improve the student experience and learning.…”

“…Previous research has highlighted the importance of providing such resources in the laboratory environment to improve the student experience and learning [1,14]. While the data in Table II provided evidence that students used the resource in the classroom, the data in Table III shows how such resources can affect student satisfaction.…”

“…Learning in the laboratory should be a scaffolded learning experience for optimum learning [14]. However, in modern times this may not be possible.…”

“…This includes the ease of searching with Google, or the millions of available videos on YouTube and other specialty sites. As examples, multimedia technology has been shown to improve the student learning experience in a telecommunications laboratory [14], a physics laboratory [20], across a range of courses [1], and it has also been shown as a valuable resource for teaching programming [21].…”