Design and Implementation of a Virtual Lab in an Engineering Laboratory Course

Instructional laboratories are an essential part of the engineering curricula, where students verify engineering theories and principles through experiments and learn their limitations. However such laboratories are often limited to various constraints such as time, space, testing equipment, variety of specimens, etc. This paper introduces a web-based hybrid laboratory as an alternative with a unique feature of combining virtual simulations and real data. As a result, students not only receive the benefits of a virtual lab, but also gain the experience of processing raw field data rather than the theoretical data generated from a computer program with built-in formulas. The database is intended to be updated regularly and will continue to expand with new data provided by engineering laboratories and educational programs. A pilot study was conducted in a small class during spring 2017. This paper details the lab development and discusses the initial findings regarding students’ perceptions towards the web-based lab versus a traditional lab as well as the effectiveness of the new method based on the course assessment results.