IMPLEMENTING A VIRTUAL LABORATORY FOR A DIRECTED AND SYNCHRONOUS STUDENT LEARNING EXPERIENCE; COMBINING VIRTUAL AND REAL EXPERIMENTATION: AN EFFORT TO ENHANCE STUDENTS' CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING OF FLUID POWER

摘要

Many Engineering Science and Engineering Technology programs include technical introductory courses that students traditionally struggle with, see Borrego. The Pneumatic and Hydraulics Systems course is one of many of this type that has a relatively high W/D/F rate (Withdrawals, D and F grades). Nevertheless, hidden in each student's overall course grade is the fact that students typically do better in the laboratory portion of the class. Since 2006, the syllabus, content sequence and delivery have been improved with success but students keep perceiving a 'disconnection' between the laboratory sessions and the lecture. This indicates that while they enjoy the lab sessions they find the lecture portion 'hard' and challenging. Beyond the student's perception, the fact remains that not many students fully grasp the fundamental concepts and principles. From a pedagogical perspective, there is a difference in the approach to education and learning between the laboratory session and the lecture session of the course (as all courses with a laboratory component). In the laboratory, small groups work together with pre-labs, notes and textbooks at hand, performing the experiments under the guidance of the lab instructor, where students tend to do better in group reports. In the lecture, the instructor has a more active and traditional leading role where a few students underperform on individual assignments and tests with closed notes while they tend to do well in group assignments and open notes/textbook opportunities. Following the work developed by Zacharia, we are currently investigating the value of combining virtual experimentation (VE) and real experimentation (RE) in respect to changes in students' conceptual understanding of fluid power. Like Electrical Circuits, Pneumatic and Hydraulics Systems is an abstract subject and its successful teaching relies heavily on the use of laboratory experiments. We formulated the hypothesis that current engineering technology students, hands-on oriented, who belong to the millennial generation (Sweeny), will significantly benefit from the combination of VE and RE allowing them to see the connection between abstract principles, equations and the real world applications in a collaborative manner. Preliminary results in comparing student skills in pre-lab preparation, laboratory report grades and student survey indicate that incorporating a virtual experiment in conjunction with a real physical experiment appeared to be advantageous to student preparedness and the student's understanding of the course material.