Active Learning > Recipe Following — A Reflection from the Lab

This year, after journeying into the world of neuroscience and learning, I added a new component to my Mechanical Engineering Lab: student reflection journals.

The goal was simple — to help students engage the parts of the brain that turn experience into understanding.

They record what they observe, what surprised them, and how the concepts connect — because true learning happens when reflection meets curiosity.

So when a few students told me, “We’ve never had an exam in a lab before,”
it opened the door to a much deeper conversation.

I explained that the lab exam wasn’t about recall or calculation — it was about translation: putting what they’ve learned into their own words.
They could even use their journals, because I wasn’t testing memory — I was testing understanding.


After more than 40 years as an educator and engineering consultant, I’ve seen the long-term effects of treating labs as recipe-following exercises.
We end up with professionals who can replicate a process but struggle to articulate why it works.

That’s not their fault — it’s a reflection of how we train them.

It’s time we reimagine the lab as more than a one-credit add-on.
The lab should be a studio of understanding — a place where students can connect theory and experience, test ideas, and reflect on outcomes.

When we teach through active learning, not rote steps, we cultivate engineers who think like master chefs — able to take raw data and turn it into design, to see failure as feedback, and to innovate from the unknown.

This isn’t a critique of lab instructors — far from it.

It’s an invitation to share what’s working, to discuss how we can bring reflection, curiosity, and creativity back into the lab experience.
Because if lectures teach the recipe, then the lab is where we learn to cook for real — to blend data, design, and intuition into something original.


To my fellow educators and engineers:

How are you bringing reflection or neuroscience-informed practices into your teaching?

What have you seen help students move from recipe to mastery?