Engaged and Active ​Learning through Collaborative Online Lab Experiences
This project implements various learning strategies in order to improve the quality of electrical engineering (EE) online labs. These strategies include accomplishing teamwork in online labs, creating a learning community to break down the online isolation, integration of open-ended design experiences into lab work, incorporation of pre-lab simulations and pre-lab video demonstrations.
The goals of this project are:
To develop high-impact online lab teaching practices that contribute to the field of STEM education that is instrumental for academic institutions teaching online labs.
To overcome the isolation of the online labs and make it a learning community.
To provide opportunities to instill self-reliance, student engagement and confidence in online labs.
To develop an online experiment bank using the knowledge and expertise gained from the project, and make it publicly available to high schools and higher education institutions.
Specifically, we are looking for the answers to the following research questions:
Do the collaborative online labs improve students’ learning (knowledge retention) in the chosen EE courses?
How much better will be the performance of students taking collaborative online labs in this project compared to students taking the online labs before the lab strategies implemented?
Did the open-ended design problems given in labs help students develop a deeper understanding; build self-confidence and improve critical thinking skills? How is tinkering and technical self-efficacy affected by open-ended design problems?
How does a collaborative learning community help students’ learning experience?
Is there a difference in students’ interest, self-efficacy, motivation and attitudes toward Electrical Engineering for those who receive the collaborative online labs, compared to those who received the online labs before the lab strategies implemented?
This project is supported by NSF DUE; FO: NSF 19‐601 "Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Education and Human Resources"; Award Number (FAIN): 2048328