2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Overview
Virtual, online, and digital learning tools can be used to provide equity in access to STEM knowledge. These tools also serve as the building blocks for personalized learning platforms. The assessment instrument, Student Perceived Value of an Engineering Laboratory (SPVEL) was developed to ascertain the impact and efficacy of virtual and in-person engineering laboratories in the 21st-century undergraduate curriculum, which addressed an emerging need for assessing engineering labs that take place in a myriad of environments in higher education, i.e., in-person, virtual, and hybrid. Due to the vast array of technological advancements over the last decade, this instrument addresses the need to holistically examine instructional content, instructor communication, and student perceptions of value and motivation to learn from in-person and virtual lab conditions. For this work, the SPVEL was used to evaluate student perceptions of a LabVIEW laboratory to understand their motivation, experiences, and performance (grades).

Theoretical Frameworks
This instrument is premised on three theoretical frameworks: the Technology Acceptance Model, Astin’s Input-Environment-Output (IEO) Conceptual Model, and Engineering Role Identity. SPVEL is unique because it extends beyond traditional course evaluation instruments that focus on instructor preparedness and ability to teach course content. Instead, the SPVEL connects students’ 1) appreciation for laboratory discipline content and relevance to their career aspirations, 2) engineering role identity development as a function of participation within the lab, and student sociocultural identities (race, ethnicity, and gender).

Research Question
This instrument was used to answer two research questions. How do student’s sociocultural identity characteristics relate to their perceptions of value in a virtual engineering lab? How are students’ perceptions of virtual lab value related to the sociocultural identities and lab report grades?

Research Methodology and Environment
This study was conducted in a capstone senior Mechanical and Aerospace engineering laboratory course within a virtual learning (VL) setting at a university in the northeastern United States with 227 undergraduate engineering participants. A quantitative analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed on the dependent list of the 26 items of the SPVEL, where the factors considered were race/ethnicity and gender.

Findings
Statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) were found in student’s perception of several variables, including VL's ability to replace physical labs, their friend’s seeing them as an engineer, their self-identification as an engineer, VLs being good learning tools and prior experience of high school VLs. From the post hoc tests performed using the Games-Howell procedure, it was revealed that LatinX/Hispanic American students strongly believed that VLs could replace in-person labs and that African American students found VLs to be good learning tools and indicated engineering as an essential part of their self-image to higher degrees than other race/ethnicity student populations.

Implications for Practice
Studies such as these are critical in elucidating how laboratory environments affirm (or do not affirm) students’ positionality in engineering. Furthermore, this work helps educators as they contemplate evidence-based practices for updating and modernizing laboratory equipment, protocols, and subject matter in innovative, novel ways. Lastly, this study works to build student-centered personalized learning approaches that are needed to customize learning for each student's strengths, needs, skills, and interests.