Students’ Engagement Levels in Virtual Laboratories: Mechanical Engineering Education Case Study

Moving from face-to-face (F2F) engineering laboratories to a virtual laboratory (VL) has impacted our teaching practices and students' experience. With increasing numbers of students on stay home notices due to health risk alerts and warnings (Singapore case), online blended learning has been implemented for physical laboratory sessions, whenever the circumstances permit. In these situations, achieving the learning outcomes has become more challenging. It has been reported that remote and VL teaching has often resulted in the loss of mentorship, community, peer motivation, and overall student engagement has been diminished. These challenges have led us to investigate how we can motivate our students and increase their engagement in VLs to achieve the learning outcomes. This session intends to ask participants to discuss practical issues about aspects of the VL and its impact on students' engagement levels