No-cost Implementation of Electronic Lab Notebooks in an Intro Engineering Design Course

摘要

In our "Introduction to Engineering Design" course, we had traditionally used paper-based Lab Notebooks (LN). In a three-ring binder, students would keep records of their work, including printout of spreadsheets, controller programs, etc. However, many students expressed reluctance to this routine, part of the reason being the cost and inconvenience of printing. They regarded the LN and, by association, the concept of engineering documentation as a pointless chore, rather than an integral component of their learning experience. In response, we considered electronic LN (eLN), and opted to use the tools at hand: Blackboard Learn (BBL) and Google Drive (GD). A comparison test was conducted with three sections of the course. One section used traditional paper-based LN. In the other two sections, computer-generated contents were saved in their original format, and non-computer-generated contents were digitized and saved. Students were to organize these in an electronic "folder", which essentially served as their eLN. Between the two sections that used eLN, one was to submit the contents via BBL, while the other was to maintain the contents in a GD folder that the instructor shared with each student. The main objectives were to explore the feasibility of replacing paper binders with electronic folders, and to identify technical and managerial characteristics of using BBL and GD as platform. The assessment was based on analysis of responses to an end-of-semester survey, analysis of the quality and completeness of the LN, and anecdotal account of student comments and reactions. We found that both implementations of eLN were feasible. The BBL method resulted in somewhat better completeness than the other methods. GD was less effective than the other two methods as a mechanism to submit assignments; on average, those who used GD were more likely to miss the deadline or submit incomplete work. Although powerful, GD seemed almost too flexible and complicated to a number of students whose computer literacy was still developing. In following semesters, we plan to use BBL as main platform, supplemented by GD.