Resumen de Implementation of blogging as an alternative to the lab report
Troy Hicks, Justin Bruner, Tolga Kaya
Undergraduate engineering laboratory courses are designed to increase students’ hands-on capabilities throughapplication of theoretical knowledge. However, a laboratory manual may lack any connection to prior content, andexpectations for thoughtful, developed writing are minimal. In this article, an instructor’s implementation of acollaborative project to build Rube Goldberg machines combined with the course laboratory reports presented viablogs has been evaluated. An end-of-semester survey was conducted with the 18 students in the course and results arediscussed along with the analysis of blog comments and student products. Overall, the intervention was deemed successfulas a means to improve students’ engagement, learning, and collaborations, despite some students’ concern that bloggingmay not have improved their learning.
