Journal of Engineering Education Transformations

Abstract

This case study of categorized laboratory is basically to explore the effectiveness of structured enquiry in database application laboratory to encourage inquiry for the undergraduate students of Information Science & engg department. Enquiry based learning approaches enhance student's learning as compared to the conventional method. In enquiry based approach all the experiments are classified into four categories such as demonstration, exercise, structured enquiry and open ended experiment. During the year 2012-13 and 2013-14 batches, students are compared with respect to their exam score, understanding of concepts, analyzing and implementing the studied concepts, database design and the nature of problem statement given in the laboratory.

All the batches are given with different set of unique problem statements to avoid plagiarism and that really encouraged the students to study DBMS subject in depth, and also stimulated them to choose data mining and information retrieval subject, data engineering theme to build the capstone projects in their higher semesters.

This enquiry-based laboratory conduction has enhanced the students learning skills, stimulated to acquire content knowledge, problem solving skills, asking questions, and coming up with alternate design approaches for given problem. The results of this two years study give us a clear differentiation that inquiry based approach is better for students to acquire in depth knowledge and problem solving skills as compared to traditional approach where there was no categorization of lab experiments.

Keywords

Full Text

Abstract

Data structures and algorithms play amajor role in optimizing any non trivial software application. Learning and applying concepts of this course demands a great amount of analytical and logical thinking skills. Teaching this subject at early stages of Information Technology related engineering courses poses a great challenge to the Course Instructors. In this paper, we presented the experience of using structured approach of designing and assessing Data Structures and Algorithms Laboratory experiments. All our laboratory experiments and assignments are well designed and structured to achieve the desired ABET a-k learning outcome elements set for the course.

Our experimental case study examples, structured enquiry based experiments and student's feedback results prove the effectiveness of designing and adopting structured experiments in the laboratory course.

Keywords

Full Text

Abstract

The effectiveness of engineering education depends on the teaching and learning process adapted by the faculty and students. Lot of research is going on to effectively educate the undergraduate students, among that one of the methodology which we have followed is to categorize lab experiments as Exercise, Enquiry based and Open Ended learning. In the proposed paper a background study is carried out on how to develop problem solving, thinking and analysis skills among students and more importantly most of the students face difficulty in applying the concepts for developing applications or projects. Hence considering the above facts we carried out a study to bridge this gap with a novel approach of categorization. This practice was carried out on Distributed and cloud computing lab (DCC) as a case study for Information science and Engineering students of final year.

A new technique to measure the effectiveness of students learning in DCC lab based on program outcome attainment for engineering laboratory education and affordances of the pedagogical features of the lab.The results interpret that the novel approach adopted has improved performance of students as compared to the traditional learning methods.

Keywords

Full Text

References

Abstract

Keywords

Full Text