Advances in Engineering Education - Prompting by COVID-19 to Rethink the Purpose of Engineering Laboratory Education - Develop Practical Competence to Solve Real-World Problems - Fall 2020 Volume 8 Number 4

Oct 15, 2026

Engineering laboratory education often fails to give students enough practice in critical thinking through real-world problems, and this gap is even harder to address in online labs. The article presents an approach that uses a real-world challenge and big data analysis to strengthen student data analysis skills on a remote teaching platform. Students continuously collect, analyze, and evaluate solutions through hands-on experimentation with accessible resources, outperforming videorecorded labs within Bloom’s taxonomy. Lessons are also summarized from transferring six engineering laboratory courses online during COVID-19.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages7

Reading Time18 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Research question and rationale

Method

MATLAB-based machine learning module workflow

Preliminary Results of Online Implementation

Remote learning transition and options

| | Ad | vances in Engineering Edu | cation | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | FALL 2020 VOLUME 8 NUMBER 4 Prompting by COVID-19 to Rethink the Purpose of Engineering Laboratory Education-Develop Practical Competence to Solve Real-World Problems SIU LING LEUNG BRIANNE A. HARGROVE ERIC R. MARSH ANDREA R. GREGG AND KAREN A. THOLE Department of Mechanical Engineering Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA ABSTRACT Today’s engineering laboratory education often lacks opportunities for students to practice critical thinking through real-world problems. This particular objective is even harder to achieve through online laboratory experiments. In this article, we summarize our innovation in using a real-world challenge, analyze big data, to empower student data analysis skills in remote teaching platform. This approach allows students to collect data, analyze, and evaluate possible solutions continuously through hands-on experimentation with accessible resources around them. Compared to the videorecorded lab, our method achieves a higher level of learning in Bloom’s taxonomy. To further improve our approach, we summarize our lesson learned from transferring six different engineering laboratory courses online, in response to the COVID-19 . A thriving 21st-century learning environment has to embrace agility, create flexibility, adapt to technology, and support virtual team collaborations. Key words: Laboratory, Problem based learning, Critical thinking INTRODUCTION One major challenge in 21st-century engineering laboratory education is fostering students’critical thinking skills1. Today’s labs often lack opportunities to solve complex real-world problems FALL 2020 VOLUME 8 NUMBER 4 1 ADVANCES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION Prompting by COVID-19 to Rethink the Purpose of Engineering Laboratory Education-Develop Practical Competence to Solve Real-World Problems because students often work on artificially-defined activities with little connection to today’s challenges. The purpose of labs in undergraduate engineering education continuously evolvesin our changing world2, from a heavy focus on hands-on practicum in the 19th century to theorydriven approaches in the 21st century. However, recent literature shows that theory-driven labs provide little to no measurable benefit in improving students’ understanding of basic science and engineering principles3. So, we asked: what is the purpose of an engineering laboratory in the 21st century? The ABET/Sloan Colloquy4 identified that the objective of engineering education laboratories is to promote student cognitive, psychomotor, and affective skills2. In the past year, the Penn State Department of Mechanical Engineering initiated faculty discussions for modernizing the undergraduate curriculum to promote student cognitive skills. The intention is to distill our existing lab courses into a new problem-based laboratory course. At the same time, a thorough renovation of space fora new dual-purpose teaching and maker-space facility is underway. The new course will encompass advanced topics, e. g. , energy, sustainability, big data, and autonomous robotics. Students will examine and scaffold complex problems, apply foundational knowledge, and evaluate possible ways to solve problems through hands-on experimentation. In light of COVID-19, we observed an urgent need to redesign our traditional lab courses to provide interactive materials, which are engaging and allow students to perform hands-on experimentation with accessible resources. We took this situation as an opportunity to pilot one of the experiments in our new problem-based laboratory course. The particular experiment introduces big data principles by using statistics to classify human activities. Students use a smartphone to gather motion data, perform data analysis and processing, then classify human activities by machine learning algorithms. It is the f

FAQs

Why do traditional engineering labs need redesign in the 21st century?

They often rely on artificially defined activities with little connection to real-world challenges, which limits students’ critical thinking and complex problem-solving ability.

What is the core of the proposed remote lab approach?

It uses a real-world challenge combined with big data analysis to train students to collect motion data, process it, and classify human activities using machine learning algorithms.

How does the MATLAB machine learning module support the learning process?

The module is built around basic statistics, data analysis, and basic machine learning concepts in MATLAB live scripts, guiding students through a five-step workflow from feature extraction to model training and deployment.

Oct 15, 2026

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