Incorporating Multimedia Content to Enhance and Re-focus Course Delivery for a Multidisciplinary Engineering Laboratory

摘要

While electronic and on-line resources have made the remote delivery of lecture-based courses common place, the importance attached to the undergraduate laboratory experience has, in contrast, grown. Engineering-based knowledge is traditionally gained practically in educational laboratories. Initiated in 1997, the Multidisciplinary Engineering Laboratory Sequence (MEL) at the Colorado School of Mines was created to provide students with a foundation in engineering fundamentals, skills to adapt to rapidly changing technology, and an aptitude for life-long learning. MEL's educational objectives have been focused on experiments that span multiple disciplines, extend knowledge, and cultivate teamwork and leadership. From the beginning there were challenges to delivering a uniform curriculum. Instructors wrestle with a "hands-off" approach versus a traditional explain-all-the-steps approach to successfully develop a student's cognition (instrumentation and data analysis), psychomotor (apparatus operation and sensory awareness), and affective domain (learning from failure, creativity, and communication). Also, it has been observed that laboratory apparatus credibility and data relevance are critical, and perhaps essential, for students to successfully internalize their experience. Preparation in advance of an upcoming exercise is the key to student success, and efforts to encourage preparation have lasting returns. There may be as many as seven laboratory sections for each course in the sequence taking place each week. Scheduling necessitates the involvement of several different instructors to staff the course, each bringing with them areas of expertise ranging from theory, to instrumentation, to data acquisition, to lab experience. The diversity makes the laboratory experience rich, but also presents challenges to optimizing course delivery to individual sections and the course overall. In an effort to enhance the student experience, short videos and slide presentations bringing together collective instructors' expertise were created to supplement the written introductions, descriptions, and pre-laboratory worksheets that have traditionally been provided. The resulting multimedia resources address multiple learning modes, accommodate the student's schedules, and provide a host of different means by which students can access the material. The ability to view the material multiple times and concentrate on challenging subject areas appears to be popular among students; it has increased efficiency and allowed for the expansion and growth of course content. The viewing statistics show that video modules are initially viewed prior to the lab period and, again, during the preparation of the final report. This paper will explore the concerns and motivations that preceded preparation of multimedia content, outline thoughts to aid future production of effective course material videos based on experience gained, and offer a qualitative assessment of the changes in terms of the student experience and outcomes.