Most universities worldwide are having their conventional education interrupted by the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). In order to keep the education system continues, transformation to the conventional teaching and learning process is necessary. This includes transforming practical engineering laboratories into an online or blended mode of delivery. Not to mention to satisfy the requirement of the engineering accreditation board, ignoring the open-ended task is not an option even during this critical time. Since physical experiment at the laboratory is impossible, access to the laboratory facilities has been very limited. This paper suggests an additional element to the practical experiment which is now conducted using online platform. Since physical experiment is impossible among the students during the pandemic, some lecturers use previous existing data done by the senior students as a reference. Of course, the data is not the ideal one but considerably applicable to certain extend with certain level of error. Thus, the task for the current students is to interpret and criticize the previous experimental data besides drafting the experimental procedure on paper and the most interesting part is how to improve the physical experiment. Not only that, to make sure the element of open-ended learning involves during the teaching, computational simulation can be the best option. Students will have clear understanding since they have to sketch from scratch in order to represent the real condition of the working experiment. Validation and comparison to the computational results can increase their analytical thinking which at the same the students are able to see how the fundamental theories work for the physical experiment.
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