The Effectiveness of Virtual Labs in Engineering Education-what do we Measure?

The effectiveness of any educational technology depends on the perceptions of faculty and students about its utility or value addition in teaching and learning. In this paper we identify the criteria considered to contribute to the effectiveness of virtual labs after a literature review. There are numerous studies, which focus on the evaluation of usability of e-learning content. There are very few studies, which focus on the utility of technology in the teaching learning process. We carried out a study with engineering faculty and students to find out their perception about the criteria for effectiveness of virtual labs. Then we compare the criteria from literature review and the perception studies and come up with the most important criteria contributing to the effectiveness of the new technology labs. There are various studies, which report the effectiveness of virtual labs after carrying out experimental or quasi-experimental designs. Most of the studies report the effectiveness of the new technology labs based on the performance of students in a written exam. We propose a new technique to measure the effectiveness of virtual labs based on ABET criteria for engineering laboratory education and affordances of the pedagogical features of the lab. We present the reports of a study carried out with UG Electrical engineering students using the proposed technique to measure effectiveness.