The achievement of laboratory work learning outcomes: students perceptions

Abstract

Students’ achievements in knowledge and skills and the changes in their attitude would depend on many factors such as the teaching and learning activities, learning environments and students’ own efforts and initiatives. In engineering education, laboratory experiment, laboratory work or practical work are integrated in the curriculum to prepare students for engineering experience and practice when they graduated. Laboratory work could provide students with knowledge and practical skills. In addition, laboratory work could also contribute to the development of students’ professional skills such as team working and leadership skills. Using survey questions, this paper investigates students’ perceptions on the learning outcomes of laboratory work with respect to cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains. The results indicate that students benefited from the laboratory work where most of them perceived the laboratory work could help them to improve their knowledge (cognitive domain), practical skills (psychomotor domain) and attitude (affective domain).