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Forming an effective partnership with a dedicated LabAssistant: a software shell for engineering laboratory exercises

journal contribution
posted on 2015-12-04, 14:27 authored by Steve Rothberg, Fiona Lamb
This paper describes the structure and use of LabAssistant, a software shell purposely written to run alongside engineering laboratory exercises and provide support to students undertaking the exercises. The structure of LabAssistant enables tutors to deliver their own laboratory sessions within the shell using only basic spreadsheet skills. LabAssistant is intended to be used in conjunction with in-depth, analytical laboratory exercises and its features include text entry, numerical input and checking (including verification of calculated values and provision of appropriate feedback), graph sketching, data plotting and report generation. Feedback from students confirms that LabAssistant has enhanced the learning experience, encouraging active engagement, building confidence and assisting progression through the exercise, even using the data and information input during the session to generate the majority of their laboratory write-up automatically. From the tutor's perspective, the provision of immediate and continual help to the students is a significant enhancement to the quality of the learning experience. LabAssistant complements the tutor who is now able to deal effectively with deeper conceptual difficulties and larger student numbers. The facility to verify all calculated values and the creation of a report in a standard electronic format are significant aids to the marking of student submissions.

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Published in

European Journal of Engineering Education

Volume

27

Issue

(2)

Pages

181 - 193

Citation

ROTHBERG, S. and LAMB, F.M., 2002. Forming an effective partnership with a dedicated LabAssistant: a software shell for engineering laboratory exercises. European Journal of Engineering Education, 27 (2), pp. 181 - 193.

Publisher

© Taylor and Francis

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2002

Notes

This article is closed access.

ISSN

0304-3797

Language

  • en

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