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Session 1368 Improving Mechanics Student and Instructor Satisfaction Through On-Line Laboratory Report Submission

William K. Szaroletta, Kyle D. Lutes Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana

Abstract: On-Line laboratory report submission has drastically improved both student and faculty satisfaction in a mechanics course. Prior to this implementation, students needed to submit printed copies of their reports resulting in incurred cost to the student and bulky stacks of reports to be handled by the instructor.

This paper compares and contrasts two mechanisms for electronically submitting laboratory reports. In addition, this paper shows how the best of both worlds was obtained by integrating eSub™ directly into WebCT™. Student out-of-pockets costs have gone down as has instructor grading time; a tremendous benefit to both user groups.

Introduction: A lower division, four credit hour mechanics class is divided into three one-hour lectures and one two-hour laboratory per week, with credit being allocated at 75% for lecture and 25% for laboratory. The laboratory portion has traditionally required printed laboratory reports be submitted on mostly a weekly basis. These reports utilize standard suites of software extensively, including MS Word™, MS Excel™, and MS PowerPoint™. Digital images and screen captures from laboratory automation software drastically increase the size of these reports, which average 7MB and 20 formatted pages per report per student. Over the course of a semester, the student will often utilize their own printer to produce these reports or risk missing a deadline due to long queues at the various university computing laboratories with color printers. This direct student cost can exceed $200 over the course of a semester and has become a source of some student discontent. Laboratory data distribution to various team members has also been problematic.

Recent implementation of WebCT™ has directly improved the student satisfaction with respect to laboratory report submissions and laboratory raw data dissemination. Directly from laboratory computers, students are able to upload their experimental data directly to their team’s WebCT directory, which is accessible only by that team’s members. Following individual (and sometimes team) report writing, the reports are uploaded directly to their individual account in the course’s WebCT directory. The immediate effects of implementing this form of data dissemination and laboratory report submission has been to improve student access to laboratory data after laboratory is complete and to improve the time from report completion to report submission, saving student funds. This paper will describe the experiences with these two course enhancements, both positive and negative and describe a plan to compare and contrast the electronic submission capabilities of two software packages: WebCT™ 4 and eSub™ 2.

Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education

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Lutes, K. D., & Szaroletta, W. (2003, June), Improving Mechanics Student And Instructor Satisfaction Through Online Laboratory Report Submission Paper presented at 2003 Annual Conference, Nashville, Tennessee. 10.18260/1-2--12199