Effectiveness of virtual laboratory in engineering education: A meta-analysis
Abstract
With the development of network and simulation technology, virtual laboratories have been widely popularized in engineering education. However, few studies have systematically analyzed and summarized the impact of virtual labs on the effectiveness of engineering education. This study aims to conduct a meta-analysis of published data on the impact of virtual laboratories on engineering students’ performance. A total of 709 peer-reviewed publications on this topic were gathered from Web of Science and Scopus, and after strict inclusion criteria were applied, 46 studies from 22 publications were included in this meta-analysis. These studies were controlled experiments and pre-post designs with virtual labs as the intervention, reporting necessary descriptive summary statistics such as mean score comparisons and standard deviations of the two comparison groups. The results indicate that virtual laboratories are a significant predictor of engineering education outcomes, with an effect size (Hedges’ g) of 0.686 (95% CI 0.414–0.959). Among these, the effect sizes for “learning motivation” and “learning engagement” are the highest across all types of results, at 3.571 (95% CI 3.042–4.099) and 2.888 (95% CI 2.419–3.357), respectively; this suggests that virtual labs are a key factor in motivating engineering students to engage in learning activities and pursue knowledge and skills. The results show that virtual labs currently lack the ability to completely replace hands-on labs in…
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Evidence Hub reads this as a meta-analysis. Its evidence level is 1 of 5 (Highest · pooled evidence). Pooled evidence from several studies sits at the top of the evidence pyramid.
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