Different Lab Formats in Introduction to Engineering Course

Many incoming freshmen are ambiguous about which engineering major they are interested in. Exposing them to different engineering labs in freshman year will help them have a clear understanding about different majors. The objective of this paper is to find out a better way to deliver engineering labs to first year multidiscipline students. Mechanical and Electrical lab modules were used in this experiment. The mechanical module had four individual hands-on labs related to different aspects of mechanical engineering field, while electrical module used a project based learning approach. Each lab worked on certain portion of the project and the later labs were built onto the previous ones. A survey was conducted to collect data right after students completed the lab module to evaluate the content of the lab, as well as comparing the two different formats of the labs. The survey data shows 72.8% of the students preferred individual hands-on labs, and 27.2% of the students liked the project based lab. Regarding to gender, there was no big difference among male and female students who favored individual labs, the percentage was 73.5% and 69.3% respectively. The preference was highly related to the content of the lab and the student’s major. 93.6% of civil students preferred individual labs. This paper presents the design and implementation of mechanical and electrical lab modules, students’ feedback, and findings.