This study does not fit the usual model of a research project. It has three major goals: to learn from the literature the state of research on instructional laboratories in engineering education, to summarize the history of such laboratories, and to present a set of learning objectives that can guide future research on the subject.
In developing and conducting an ABET-sponsored workshop supported by the Sloan Foundation, it was observed that there appeared to be very little agreement concerning the fundamental objectives of instructional laboratories. Relatively few papers are published on the pedagogy related to laboratories and in those, learning objectives are generally specified very imprecisely, very narrowly or, more often, not at all. Yet, nearly every engineering educator will testify to the importance of laboratories in the educational experience.
The co-authors conducted independent literature searches to ascertain the degree to which laboratory effectiveness has been researched. These efforts served to corroborate the earlier premise that objectives-driven research was sparse and that a set of fundamental objectives could prove useful. They also gave some indication of how the advent of the computer and the resultant ability to simulate laboratory experiences altered the approach to laboratories and further blurred any erstwhile agreement on the related educational objectives. It was also observed that distance education (the primary impetus behind the workshop noted earlier) has made it even more important that the fundamental reasons for sending students to the laboratory be understood and clearly specified. ABET, increasingly called upon to accredit distance-learning programs, was especially interested in this facet.
It would be possible to walk away from this subject and simply agree that laboratories are good because they have always been good. It is our conclusion, however, that an increasingly busy curriculum cannot afford to spend valuable time and credit hours on ill-defined objectives for the laboratory (or elsewhere, for that matter). We also assert that the fundamental objectives determined at the workshop and presented in the paper can serve to focus laboratory research in the future. The paper concludes with the identification of several unanswered, or minimally answered questions relative to instructional laboratories and proposes a number of research projects that should serve to advance the effectiveness of engineering instructional laboratories and hence the quality of engineering education.
Author 1: Lyle Feisel