Assessing engineering students’ practical intelligence as the outcome of performing ‘hands-on’ laboratory classes

Abstract

Experience in an engineering laboratory is important for engineering students and expected to enhance understanding of engineering concepts for which they have learned the theory. Although the aim of the laboratory is an opportunity to learn and gain experience or practical intelligence (PI), the authors do not know much about what actually happens in a typical laboratory class. The development of practical intelligence is expected to be happened when students are performing tasks in the laboratory exercises and they may possibly be able to detect and solve problems or diagnose faults in similar equipment. Thus the purpose of this study is to assess students’ practical intelligence as the outcome of performing laboratory exercises and relating to the ability to diagnose equipment faults. Comparison of novel-expert rating approach is used in this study. The findings demonstrated that practical intelligence can be measured by calculating the difference between students’ ratings and the experts’ ratings.