Work-In-Progress: Interactive Lab Manuals and Videos for a Unit Operations Course

This paper presents the process of transitioning lab procedures/manuals from traditional procedural text to interactive text with additional videos explaining equipment operation. Simple tools have been used for this intervention, but the anticipated outcomes in terms of student learning are significant. Lab instructors should also benefit from a smoother-running lab with fewer requests for help which will facilitate increasing the difficulty level of the required experiments. The process for capturing the student perceptions on the effectiveness of this new approach, as well as their satisfaction level, their learning, and actual lab performance is detailed. It involves questionnaires to students and instructors, collection of lab performance grades, and investigation of the view patterns on the posted lab videos. It is believed that this plethora of data will paint a clear picture of the results of the new approach. Comparisons with the traditional lab delivery method can also be made, as only half of the experiments are converted to the new format.