2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This evidence-based practice full paper examines how engineering instructors can design emotionally supportive blended laboratory environments that help students connect theory with practice. Engineering labs that integrate hands-on and online components often evoke strong emotions such as frustration, anxiety, and excitement that influence learning and persistence. Designing labs that challenge students cognitively while supporting them emotionally remains a critical instructional challenge. To address this gap, this work explores emotional regulation within a situated and blended learning laboratory environment and presents evidence-based design principles for creating emotionally supportive learning experiences.

This paper draws on findings from a qualitative study situated within Situated Learning Theory, which views learning as participation in authentic, socially mediated contexts. Guided by this framework, we examined how engineering students experience and regulate emotions while working in blended laboratory settings that combine in-person collaboration, online engagement, and take-home experimentation. The study focused on understanding how affective experiences intersect with cognitive engagement to shape persistence in laboratory learning.

Data were collected through a series of focus groups with students enrolled in a multi-modal engineering laboratory bootcamp that emphasized authentic problem-solving using take-home laboratory kits. Thematic analysis was used to interpret students’ accounts of their learning processes and emotional responses. Students described how authentic, open-ended tasks often triggered frustration and uncertainty but also created opportunities for growth when appropriate support and autonomy were provided. Findings suggest that well-designed situated learning environments do more than develop technical competence. They also cultivate emotional resilience, persistence, and professional identity by intentionally integrating the cognitive and affective dimensions of learning. Moreover, emotional regulation emerged not as an isolated skill but as an integral part of learning to think and act like an engineer. From this analysis, we derived three instructional design principles that promote productive emotional regulation and engagement in blended laboratory environments: (1) structured autonomy through flexible yet guided activities that maintain clarity of purpose, (2) reflective scaffolds that help students reframe challenges and extract learning from mistakes, and (3) inclusive collaboration that normalizes emotional expression and fosters peer support during complex problem solving.

This paper offers evidence-based recommendations for engineering educators on how to balance cognitive challenges with emotional support when designing experiential, blended, or hands-on laboratories. The paper will illustrate how these design principles were enacted in practice and discuss how they can inform the development of emotionally supportive learning environments across diverse engineering contexts. By translating qualitative evidence into actionable guidance, this work contributes to evidence-based practice in engineering education. It provides instructors with a framework for balancing cognitive challenge with emotional support, enabling them to design laboratory experiences that promote both technical mastery and emotional well-being.