Web Based Delivery Of Laboratory Experiments And Its Effectiveness Based On Student Learning Style

Web based preparation of students in laboratory based courses may offer unique features and benefits over conventional in-class preparation. Apart from reduced costs and training time, it is an effective tool for education and preparation of large classes, convenient for students due unlimited access without time constraints, and more importantly, it allows mistakes to be made by the users and thus facilitates learning in an active manner. Four interactive web-based modules on Material Sciences related experiments (virtual labs) were developed at the Texas Tech University. The aim was to help undergraduate students learn more about the objectives and procedures of laboratory experiments in order to be better prepared for performing their tasks during the physical experiment. The intention of this project was to assess the benefits of both web based training in performing the actual experiments and in the learning of students. Furthermore, we wanted to assess the perceived effectiveness of the software as a function of the student learning style and GPA performance. Access to modules was given to several sections of Materials Science Laboratory Course. A pre-lab quiz was given to all students to test the students’ understanding of objectives, procedure and the anticipated results of the experiment. The learning styles of the students were determined using the on-line Index of Learning Style (ILS). The laboratory report and test scores were compared across those sections that were exposed and not exposed to the virtual laboratories. The scores were also correlated to the GPA of the students and their scores of learning style questionnaire. In all cases, the student groups that were exposed to virtual labs performed better in both laboratory quizzes and reports. The improvement in performance was statistically significant in majority of comparisons. Our research also showed all students regardless of their GPA level benefited from the virtual labs. Based on the ILS scales, our results show that active and sensing learners benefited more from the virtual labs than visual learners. INTRODUCTION Web based preparation of students in laboratory based courses may offer unique features and benefits over conventional in class preparation. It is generally beneficial for the students to have a more informed view of the objectives, equipment, and procedures of a laboratory experiment beforehand; however, in many situations this is not possible and students have to rely on handouts that do not provide any real insight into the actual experiment. Virtual experiments may be used as an on-line preparation tool to prepare the students using animations, video clips, interactive quizzes, and semi-open-ended structure. This not only enhances the learning objectives and in general learning but also helps them be more proactive during the actual experiment. Recently, there have been numerous efforts in adopting web-based technology for laboratory education in various fields of engineering. For example, Elsherbeni et al. [1] developed one of the early virtual laboratories in microwave and electronics as purely a visualization tool. Some of the other notable efforts are by Monter-Hernandez et al. [2] in power electronics and Avouris et al. [3] in computer-assisted laboratory courses. Some of the more P ge 11437.2 interactive efforts are those reported by Bhandari and Shor [4] in the area of Controls, Budhu [5] in Soil Mechanics, Schmid [6] in Controls, and Gustavsson [7] in Electrical Circuits. More recently, other educators have developed interactive software that can be offered to the students as laboratory preparation tool to become familiar with the procedure and equipments. Two such efforts are in Materials Science [8] and Experimental Methodology [9]. Others have developed on-line laboratories to introduce the equipment and the procedure of the experiment to the students before they actually participate in the physical experiment [10]. A fully interactive experiment on metallography, and a second on measurement of hardness with highly interactive decision tree structures have also been recently developed [8, 11]. It has also been argued that the impact of the virtual laboratory supplementation would be enhanced if various learning styles are considered in the design of the software. Engineering students differ in their preferences toward how they would assimilate educational materials better. These preferences can be characterized by learning style measures such as the Index of Learning Styles (ILS) developed by Felder and Silverman [1988] for engineering students and the more general Kolb [1984] learning styles. To-date, learning styles have not been linked to the perceived effectiveness of virtual laboratories or other learning resources. An objective of the present research is to look for reliable correlations between learning styles, virtual lab supplementation, and performance in the course. Another important factor that has not been studied is the effectiveness of the virtual supplementation in relation to the student’s GPA. Will the virtual modules only help the students with higher GPAs or are they equally effective with students of lower scholastic performance? In this paper, we hypothesize that; 1) Virtual experiments used in conjunction with actual laboratory experiments will significantly improve the learning performance of the students measured through quiz and laboratory report grades. 2) The virtual laboratory supplementation will enhance the student’s performance regardless of learning styles. 3) All students regardless of their GPA performance will benefit from virtual supplementation. THE VIRTUAL LABORATORY (AN EXAMPLE) In this section, we describe the structure, content, and design of one of the tested virtual experiments on tensile testing [12]. The actual content and type of interactivity of each of the virtual labs vary according to the type of the experiment. The interactive web based tutorial is made using Macromedia Flash MX. It can be accessed either in flash player or in internet explorer. A screenshot of a general page in the tutorial is shown in Fig. 1.