2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This paper aims to investigate how engineering lab courses intervene with students in terms of written course materials. The instruments used for the study include Feisel and Rosa’s philosophical-based lab learning objectives and engineering lab report writing outcomes (1 through 9). The participating lab courses include seven engineering lab courses across four institutions. The laboratory courses cover the majority of Feisel and Rosa’s learning objectives for lab assignments. The most typical assignment method is to provide lab report guidelines in individual lab assignments or for the entire lab course; however, some labs offer templates with blanks, so students simply fill those in for lab reports. We mapped lab assignments and assessments with the engineering lab report writing outcomes. Most labs focus on audience expectations, experimentation processes, high-quality tables/graphs, lab data analysis, and organization. After surveying all the lab courses, we conducted a case study to investigate how lab instructors’ lab report assignments affect students’ lab report quality in the two lab courses (EE 221 with n = 12 and CE 212 with n = 12), showing distinct characteristics in their lab assignment and assessment. The student sample average scores from EE221, which did not provide any guidelines but required fill-in-the-blanks type lab reports, range from 1.6 (outcome 6) to 1.8 (outcome 9). Note that none of the outcomes reach a satisfactory level. In contrast, CE 212 provided the instructor’s expectations for the labs and lab reports explicitly through handouts and guidelines. CE 212 student samples show that most outcomes reach the satisfactory level or 2 out of 3. It is concluded that engineering lab courses offered a variety of materials with a wide range of lab objectives and outcomes. Those materials could impact the students’ lab report writing extensively.