Recent Publications
The persistent emphasis on theory-led instruction in many engineering technology programmes raises a practical question: does direct, hands-on exposure to equipment measurably improve how well students understand and apply what they have already studied. This study evaluated the immediate effect of a practical demonstration on assessment performance among 75 final-year Engineering Technology undergraduates enrolled in the Farm Machinery Technology module at Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka. Using a two-group, ordermanipulated (quasi-experimental) design, Group 1 (n = 33) completed a 25-item assessment immediately after a full-day practical demonstration of farm implements, tractor hitching, hydraulic operation and power take-off (PTO) applications, whereas Group 2 (n = 42) completed the same assessment before the demonstration. All students were advised to revise the same course material beforehand. Twenty closed-response items were scored against an answer key whose coding was validated against the authors’ independent hand-tallies (exact agreement on 25 of 26 checkpoints). The practical-first group outperformed the quiz-first group (mean 19.06 ± 1.17 versus 18.24 ± 1.82 of 20; 95.3% versus 91.2%). Because scores were markedly non-normal and heteroscedastic, a Welch t-test and a Mann–Whitney U test were used; both indicated a statistically significant difference (Welch t(70.5) = 2.37, p = 0.020; U = 884, p = 0.034), with a medium effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.52, 95% CI [0.11, 0.94]; Hedges’ g = 0.52). The advantage was concentrated on items referring to implements that were physically present during the demonstration, and it disappeared for the one implement (the reciprocating mower) that was not available on site. After Holm and Benjamini–Hochberg correction across 20 items, no single item reached significance, indicating that the effect is real in aggregate but modest and diffuse rather than driven by isolated items. The findings support integrating structured practical demonstration alongside theoretical instruction, while cautioning that the benefit is bounded by physical access to the equipment and by an immediate-assessment design that does not test long-term retention.