Controls Laboratory Program with an Accent on Discovery Learning

Educational laboratory exercises cover a wide spectrum ranging from programmed and highly structured tasks to discovery-learning-based and unstructured experiences. In structured or directinstruction-based exercises, students are given lists of materials, step-by-step procedures, and often specific results to calculate. In unstructured or discovery-learning-based exercises, students are given an outline of steps and measurements (guided-inquiry-based instruction), or perhaps no more than a statement of goals (inquiry-based instruction). In the past 20 years, there has been a movement in science teaching – Chemistry, Biology, and Physics – toward inquiry-based instruction, also called discovery learning [1, 2, 3]. Tinnesand and Chan make a good case for a discovery-learning approach in their artfully titled article: “Step 1: Throw Out the Instructions” [4].