Shifting pre-lab activity online for a more efficient instructional engineering laboratory session

When students come to the laboratory, the objective of the instructor is to, through carefully designed exercises, familiarize the students with concepts they have been learning about in lectures before the lab class itself. Lab work is an essential part of education of an engineer and this paper discusses how and why shifting pre- lab activity online using a Learning Management System is beneficial to both the students and the instructors and creates a more efficient instructional engineering laboratory session.