A Low-cost Materials Laboratory Sequence for Remote Instruction that Supports Student Agency

Abstract

Under the new ABET accreditation framework, students are expected to demonstrate “an ability to develop and conduct appropriate experimentation, analyze and interpret data, and use engineering judgment to draw conclusions” [1]. Traditional, recipe-based labs provide few opportunities for students to engage in realistic experimental design, and recent research has cast doubt on their pedagogical benefit [2]. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced institutions to move to remote learning. To address these challenges we developed a series of online labs for an upper-division mechanics of materials course. The first three labs consist of video demonstrations of traditional lab experiments with synchronous group discussions and data analysis. Two of these “traditional” virtual labs are supplemented with peer-teaching video activities. The final lab is a guided-inquiry activity focused on experimental design. Using only materials available at home, students measure the Young's modulus of aluminum and use their results to design a hypothetical product. In order to provide the same opportunity for students around the world, the test specimen is taken from an aluminum beverage can. One measure of whether or not an activity supports student agency is the diversity of solutions generated by students [3]. We analyzed 36 reports from the final guided-inquiry lab and coded the experimental procedure on five key decisions such as the type of experiment performed, specimen geometry, and measurement method. We identified 29 unique approaches to the problem, with no one approach accounting for more than three submissions. Student outcomes were measured by a survey of students' attitudes and self-efficacy administered directly after every lab activity except for the first one. The fraction of students endorsing statements related to a sense of agency increased dramatically between the “traditional” labs and the guided-inquiry lab: from 52% to 82% for goal-setting and from about 64% to 92% for choice of methods. Self-efficacy increased significantly in the primary targeted skills (designing experiments, making predictions, and generating further questions), but there was no significant shift in skills not explicitly targeted by the guided-inquiry lab (equitable sharing of labor, expressing opinions in a group, and interpreting graphs). Our experience demonstrates that at-home lab activities can achieve sophisticated learning outcomes without the use of lab equipment or customized kits.