Abstract:

Dynamic and interactive learning resources have increasingly been used to help STEM students understand specific theoretical models and practical experiments. They are also used to help them prepare for their lab sessions or reinforce what they learned in past ones. In the academic year 2018-2019, three sets of new learning resources were developed and deployed, preparing undergraduate Engineering students for the respective lab sessions. These sets of resources were made available on students’ Virtual Learning Environment and consist of combinations of static text and images on the learning platform itself, theory oriented animated & interactive resources, labelling interactives, questions, exercises, simulations and videos. This paper presents the results of the survey-based evaluation of these resources, showing what elements students appreciated, as well as practical issues to keep in mind during development. Overall, the results suggest that dynamic and interactive resources are not only helping students learn the presented concepts and feel more prepared going into the lab, but that they do so better than the static resources that are used for preparation in other labs. Students find these sets of resources helpful, useful, easy to use and in many cases even fun. What students liked the most in these sets of resources is that they helped them understand and prepare for their lab, that they were clear, easy to follow and interactive. Several indicated a preference for specific types of resources. Students that indicated they would change something focussed mainly on requesting more of a certain type of resource or information, or highlighted a technical or feedback related issue in a specific resource.

Keywords:

Interactive learning resources, dynamic laboratory manual, virtual laboratory, engineering, online learning materials.