Changing the LAB Experience in Undergraduate Engineering

Abstract

The use of technology to enhance formative assessment in higher education continues to be a challenge regardless of advances in digital capabilities; yet research has shown its potential regardless of discipline. In undergraduate electrical and electronic engineering, which is the discipline focus in this chapter, lab work is an area that can be enhanced in this way but with such an enhancement comes a change in pedagogy from the conventional approach of in-lab physical practical work conducted by the individual student alone or in a group with limited support to one of working collaboratively in remote access laboratories scattered far and wide through an online learning systems that provides access to laboratory infrastructure and learning environments through the internet. In a collaborative learning environment, students work together to solve problems and need to become involved in dialogue to achieve a common goal where they depend on and are accountable to each other. This chapter explores students' experience of a collaborative approach to lab work regarding mastery of the voltage division rule and its relevance to formative assessment using remote access laboratories that depend on technology and internet access. The implications for task design and formative assessment are discussed based on the results of interviews with participating students. The nature of change in pedagogical practice is highlighted as are the implications for the design of formative assessment and the need to work at the level of “feedback markers” that are able to feed forward to progress learning.