Effectiveness of virtual laboratory in engineering education: A meta-analysis

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 engineering education. However, they can inspire student motivation and engagement and compensate for the shortcomings of traditional lab facilities. Virtual labs have become an indispensable auxiliary tool in engineering experimental teaching. Therefore, consciously integrating virtual labs with physical experiences is a direction for sustainably developing engineering education in the future.