Abstract:

With the integration of the polytechnic sector in New Zealand into a single body, the capacity to have reach across the country has become more important than it was in the past. This has meant that online learning makes degree and diploma study available to anyone irrespective of geographic location. A major difficulty in delivering engineering courses online is what do we do about the laboratory work that is associated with the courses we teach? In a polytechnic setting, laboratory work is essential as it is meant to provide schooling in the collection, analysis and of real data as well as familiarity with the sort of equipment students will encounter in their working lives. An additional expectation is that students will develop investigative skills that will enable them to question, design and carry out experiments of their own.

Additionally, while there are many ways to support conceptual development, other than through practical work, research by Glaeser and Cook (2022) has shown that polytechnic engineering students prefer to connect their conceptual understanding to concrete practical situations. An unintended benefit of this process they say has been an improvement in students’ reflective practice, which has led to deeper conceptual development. For these reasons, we have considered practical work to be a non-negotiable part of the curriculum in engineering, particularly in the polytechnic environment.

This paper reports on the implementation of a three-part laboratory programme in engineering mechanics to address this issue. The programme includes the provision of kit-based experiments students can do at home, collaborative project experiments where students make their own equipment and practical worksheets that are built around video clips of experiments that typically need large expensive bits of equipment (like a tensile tester).

For the kits-based experiments, students are required to carry out lab activities using kits provided, with the lab demonstrator viewing the process in some instances live through a web camera and in other cases by students uploading videos of the experiments they have carried out. Students follow the apparatus set up instructions and collect and analyse the data. They are also asked to keep a reflective journal, which must be submitted with their lab books and reports. Feedback so far has shown that the area in which they have the most difficulty is in setting up the apparatus, something with which they would have had direct help in the laboratory.

Associated with this are “project-experiments” where students work in groups or by themselves to make cost effective pieces of apparatus that they then then use to investigate physical phenomena. The intention of this is to get students to collaborate and reflect on the process of designing apparatus that works and to be able to reflect on the results they get and differentiate between issues of equipment design or data collection. While difficult to implement “online” and at distance, feedback from students who have participated in this has so far been positive.

To provide experience with pieces of equipment they might encounter in their workplace, collaborative tasks have been designed that are linked to video clips of their operation.

In conclusion, a process of evaluation of this programme by asking students who have experienced both the traditional laboratory courses and the home based course to reflect on their experiences.

Keywords:

Engineering Education, Laboratory courses, collaborative learning.