Geotechnical Engineering Lab Course Virtual Instruction Methods: A Response to Covid-19

Georgia Institute of Technology's (Georgia Tech's) response to the COVID-19 pandemic included ensuring students gained equitable exposure to hands-on learning. Instructors of the introductory geotechnical engineering lab course developed At-Home Lab Kits that contained materials for students to gather data at home to learn different geotechnical engineering concepts. An end-of-semester survey was distributed for students to share their experiences and for instructors to observe the effectiveness of the virtual lab instruction method. Overall, 90.5% of students responded that labs with hands-on tests were more beneficial than labs that only involved data analysis. Among the topics presented, students were most confident in their understanding of grain size distribution and hydraulic conductivity;they were least confident in their understanding of Atterberg limits, the only instruction topic that did not include hands-on experimentation. Results indicate that at-home lab experiments are a beneficial substitution for in-class lab procedures when in a virtual pedagogy.