Effects of In-class Hands-On Laboratories in a Large Enrollment, Multiple Section Blended Linear Circuits Course

This paper examines the effects of hands-on learning in an undergraduate circuits class that is taught to non-majors; i.e., students outside of electrical and computing engineering. The course, ECE3710, is taught in a blended format facilitated by the video lectures prepared for two Massive Open Online Courses developed for the Coursera Platform. Because of the video content covered outside of class, the face-to-face portion of the class is enhanced with a number of active and collaborative learning techniques, including the inclusion of small-scale, mobile, hands-on labs. The assessment results show that the laboratory experiences play a significant role in the enhancement of student performance. The labs also have the benefit of improving students’ confidence in course topics that are related to lab exercises.