A Multi-criteria Method for Improving the Assessment of Students' Laboratory Work Using Online Laboratory

Online laboratories have changed the way of assessing students' laboratory work (lab work). Traditionally, students' lab work is mainly assessed by their reports after the experiments, with their attendance considered as well. However, whether the students are actually engaged in experiments and how they perform their assignments are difficult to be traced individually, especially for the case of a large number of students. In this paper, a multi-criteria method for assessing students' lab work based on online laboratory is proposed. Different from the hands-on labs, the online labs are able to trace and store more students' activities automatically. Apart from the quality of the lab reports, the experimental data collected from the database of the online laboratory as well as the snapshots of experimental steps are also considered. Therefore, judging criteria of lab work assessment can be extended to a higher standard, improving the assessment of student learning with much more objectivity based on lab work related information rather than lab reports only. The paper takes Wuhan University (WHU) as a case study, where students in engineering are using Networked Control System Laboratory (NCSLab) as a tool to conduct experiments for their laboratory sessions. Generalized from the practical teaching, the new assessment method is proved to be useful to judge students' performance during the online experimentation.