Laboratory Experiments Video Clips Students' Perceptions

The use of video notes, or lecture summaries is being used for a while now in higher education, either as a standalone assist to the students or as part of the Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) being widely used nowadays in both distance and on-campus learning, providing supporting tools and encourage independent learning which allow students to access learning materials, course work activities and submit assignments, however, when it comes to practical laboratories students still need to read the lab handout, follow the experimental procedure steps to carry out the experiments, and get results, these results in most of the cases will not be verified to be valid till the students start working on their lab report, and compare to references or published data. As an initiative to enhance the engineering students experience in Heriot Watt University Dubai Campus a short lab video clips were introduced which cover the experimental procedure to allow the students to see the experiment setup for real before they attend the lab, be familiar with the measurements', and where to get them while preparing for the lab., initial survey results indicates that students find these lab videos to be very useful for preparing for the lab as well as for their revision, and lab report preparation.