Designing the "user experience" for labs without giving too much away I have a rather unusual UX to design.  I'm writing a laboratory manual for engineering students learning how to build electric circuits.  The manual will be an interactive webpage.  One of our biggest complaints that we get from students is that the labs are too "cookie cutter", meaning that we often just list the exact steps they need to take in order to complete the lab.  Students would prefer to explore more on their own.

My idea is to design the lab manual in such a way that tasks that are not relevant to the learning objectives, but which must be done in order to achieve those learning objectives, are presented in the cookie cutter way.  Tasks that are relevant to the learning objectives are described differently.  

An example of the first type of task would be: "Plug the red cable into the red jack on the DMM", accompanied by a picture.  

An example of the second type of task might be: "Taking as many measurements as you think you need, generate a data set you can use to determine a model of the sensor".

Here is my problem: I want to create this lab manual and test it on real students.  However, I don't know which actions students will take while working towards the goals of the lab.  I know what I would do, but that's only one possible way to achieve the goals.  If I observe students who are working on the lab to determine the steps that they take, I can determine which tasks are frustrating them.  I then want to take those frustrating tasks and determine which ones are not really relevant to the learning objectives, so I'll just make them cookie cutter.  However, how do I generate that list of tasks?  I can think of two ways, neither of which are good:


Make the first version totally cookie cutter and observe student frustration
Make the first version completely not cookie cutter and observe student frustration


My issue with 1. is this imposes my method on the students, which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid.  It won't give me any information regarding which tasks need to be more open-ended.  My issue with 2. is that there are some tasks that are not intuitive and just need to be explained quickly. It won't give me any information regarding which tasks are really frustrating for the right reasons, since students will be frustrated by irrelevant tasks as well.

Any thoughts?
As @MassimoOrtolano mentioned in a comment (and I think this extends to all lab courses, not just EE), "the main factor is the time constraint." Clearly your suggestion to make the preparatory/emphasized steps "cookie cutter" and the learning objectives more open-ended is a way to approach this time constraint with balance.

It sounds like your main concern is in determining which of these steps should be cookie cutter and which should not. You give two approaches: start from the beginning and work forwards, or start from the end and work backwards.

However, that assumes you are going into this with no information. That might be a principled approach in some cases, but if I can be a Bayesian for a moment, you are missing a crucial piece of prior information: you should have some idea of what your learning objectives are before you even start.

The approach I would take is to first identify learning goals, then sketch out the procedure and identify which steps are relevant to the learning goals and which are not. Cookie cutter those that aren't, leave open-ended those that are. Surely, this won't produce a perfect lab course on first pass, and it might take some tweaking over time, but it seems like you expect this and it is a better approach than either extreme.

Second, involve your students in your goals. I think it's best to think of students as if they are quite capable and smart. Let them know: "I designed these labs so that I give you a step-by-step through some of the things that aren't relevant to the learning goals of the day. At the start of each lab, I will provide you with a list of the intended learning goals. I am looking for feedback if you either a) feel like you are spending too much time on something that isn't a learning goal, or b) feel like the answers are being handed to you for the things that are."

When in doubt, it seems like it makes some sense to bias towards cookie-cutter towards the beginning of the course and towards more freedom in the end, but that depends on how well the different pieces fit together and how complex the problems get by the end.