Prompting by COVID-19 to Rethink the Purpose of Engineering Laboratory Education -- Develop Practical Competence to Solve Real-World Problems

• Published in: Advances in engineering education Vol. 8; no. 4
• Main Authors: Leung, Siu Ling, Hargrove, Brianne A, Marsh, Eric R, Gregg, Andrea R, Thole, Karen A
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Society for Engineering Education 01.12.2020
• Subjects: Computer Assisted Instruction; COVID-19; Critical Thinking; Data Analysis; Distance Education; Educational Change; Electronic Learning; Engineering Education; Laboratory Experiments; Laboratory Training; Online Courses; Pandemics; Problem Based Learning; Problem Solving; Role of Education; Undergraduate Students
• ISSN: 1941-1766; 1941-1766

Today's engineering laboratory education often lacks opportunities for students to practice critical thinking through real-world problems. This particular objective is even harder to achieve through online laboratory experiments. In this article, we summarize our innovation in using a real-world challenge, analyze big data, to empower student data analysis skills in remote teaching platform. This approach allows students to collect data, analyze, and evaluate possible solutions continuously through hands-on experimentation with accessible resources around them. Compared to the video-recorded lab, our method achieves a higher level of learning in Bloom's taxonomy. To further improve our approach, we summarize our lesson learned from transferring six different engineering laboratory courses online, in response to the COVID-19. A thriving 21st-century learning environment has to embrace agility, create flexibility, adapt to technology, and support virtual team collaborations.