An evaluation of students’ practical intelligence and ability to diagnose equipment faults

Abstract

Empirical studies suggest that practical intelligence acquired in engineering laboratories is valuable in engineering practice and could also be a useful learning outcome from a laboratory experience. Acquiring practical intelligence either intentionally or unintentionally may play an important role in laboratory work and it occurs when the students are performing tasks the laboratory. When evaluating laboratory exercises, previous research demonstrates that students achieve specified explicit learning objectives to varying degrees. Nonetheless, practical intelligence has not yet been assessed or measured. Furthermore, since engineering practice also relies on substantial practical intelligence, it would be useful to study the extent to which students acquire this. One way to assess this is to see how readily students can solve practical problems such as diagnosing faults in the laboratory experiment. Therefore, the aim of this research is to find ways to measure changes in practical intelligence in order to assess informal learning in engineering laboratory classes. We would also like to test the relationship between practical intelligence acquired in laboratory classes with the ability to diagnose simple experiment faults in laboratory arrangements. A methodology of evaluating practical intelligence and assessment of faults diagnosis tasks are described and the results of this study are discussed.