Exploring Undergraduate Engineering Students’ Perspectives on Laboratory Learning: Comparing Hands-On, Remote, and Virtual Environments

Engineering is a discipline dedicated to designing, developing, and optimizing production systems and relies heavily on laboratory experience. Laboratories play a pivotal role in facilitating coherent learning outcomes from theoretical knowledge and are particularly crucial in enabling engineering students to acquire empirical data for designing and developing products while evaluating their performance on hands-on, remote, and virtual laboratories are three distinct types used in engineering majors, each with advantages and disadvantages. Notably, remote and virtual laboratories have gained prominence in universities worldwide, especially in light of the COVID- 19 pandemic. Remote laboratories have emerged as a primary mode of laboratory learning for engineering students, and remote laboratories are poised to remain a central trend in the future, even as the pandemic abates. The findings highlighted the reasons underlying students' attitudes. Transcripts of the interviews were analyzed using thematic and content analysis methods. The thematic analysis identified eight five main themes: (1) expectations and academic growth; (2) communication skills; (3) challenges in hands-on learning; (4) virtual learning experience; (5) personal growth and workplace readiness. Students' attitudes towards the three types of laboratories were varied. Hands-on laboratories were favored for essential practical experiences, while remote and virtual laboratories were perceived as efficient and convenient options. In conclusion, personal experiences, gender differences in lab preferences and experience, technological comfort, and individual learning styles all influence these attitudes, and the findings of this study have implications for improving engineering education and future laboratory development.