Experimenting in PILAR Federation: a Common Path for the Future

The PILAR (Platform Integration of Laboratories based on the Architecture of visiR) Erasmus Plus project started in September 2016 and will last three years. The core of the PILAR project is the VISIR remote laboratory —Virtual Instruments System In Reality—. The project aims for a federation of five of the existing VISIR nodes, sharing experiments, capacity and resources among partners, and to provide access to VISIR remote lab, through PILAR consortium, to students from other educational institutions. PILAR will be the framework from which management tasks will be performed and laboratories/experiments will be shared. PILAR will also foster the Special Interest Group of VISIR under the Global Online Laboratory Consortium (GOLC) of the International Association of Online Engineering (IAOE).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Federated Electronic Practical Resources using PILAR as VISIR Integrated Tool

Practical training is a pillar in technical education. Traditionally, these benefits have been acquired through hands-on laboratory sessions. However, at present, the educational models trend to rely on distance education tools either totally (e-learning, m-learning, etc.) or partially (b-learning). To provide practical training in those educational scenarios is challenging. Remote laboratories --real laboratories, working on real systems and under real conditions, controlled remotely-- can play a fundamental role. Nevertheless, remote laboratories not only provide advantages, but disadvantages of both environments involved in the process: real laboratories and remote communications. Furthermore, remote laboratories add new limitations due to constructive constraints. VISIR (Virtual Instruments System In Reality) is a remote laboratory on top of the state of the art for wiring and measuring electrical and electronics circuits, but VISIR system has his own particular restrictions like any other remote lab. In this context, PILAR (Platform Integration of Laboratories based on the Architecture of visiR) Erasmus Plus project development aims for a federation of five of the existing VISIR nodes in Europe: Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH), Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED), University of Deusto (UDEUSTO), Carinthia University of Applied Sciences (CUAS), School of Engineering of Polytechnic of Porto (ISEP). This paper describes the benefits that PILAR project will provide to the consortium, and how these physical constraints of the VISIR system can be compensated through the federation, after one year and a half of the project development and having the first draft of the federation and weebsite running.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

PILAR: a Federation of VISIR Remote Laboratory Systems for Educational Open Activities

Social demands have promoted an educational approach based on an “anywhere and anytime” premise. Remote laboratories have emerged as the answer to the demands of technical educational areas for adapting themselves to this scenario. The result has not only benefit distance learning students but has provided new learning scenarios both for teachers and students as well as allowing a flexible approach to experimental topics. However, as any other solution for providing practical scenarios (hands-on labs, virtual labs or simulators), remote labs face several constraints inherited from the subsystems of its deployment hardware (real instruments, equipment and scenario) and software (analog/digital conversions, communications, workbenches, etc.). This paper describes the Erasmus+ project Platform Integration of Laboratories based on the Architecture of visiR (PILAR) which deals with several units of the federation installed in different educational institutions and devoted to analog electronics and electrical circuits. Based on the limitations of remote labs, the need for the federation will be justified and its benefits will be described by taking advantage of its strengths. The challenges that have come up during the different stages and the different approaches to design are also going to be described and analyzedinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

PILAR: Sharing VISIR Remote Labs Through a Federation

Social demands have promoted an educational approach based on an “anywhere and anytime” premise. Remote laboratories have emerged as the answer to the demands of technical educational areas for adapting themselves to this scenario. The result has not only benefit distance learning students but has provided new learning scenarios both for teachers and students as well as allowing a flexible approach to experimental topics. However, as any other solution for providing practical scenarios (hands-on labs, virtual labs or simulators), remote labs face several constraints inherited from the subsystems of its deployment -hardware (real instruments, equipment and scenario) and software (analog/digital conversions, communications, workbenches, etc.)-. This paper describes the Erasmus+ project Platform Integration of Laboratories based on the Architecture of visiR (PILAR) which deals with several units of the federation installed in different educational institutions and devoted to analog electronics and electrical circuits. Based on the limitations of remote labs, the need for the federation will be justified and its benefits will be described.The authors acknowledge the support of the Escuela de Doctorado de la UNED, the S2013/ICE-2715 - eMadrid project, VISIR+ project Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education 2015 nº 561735-EPP-1-2015-1-PT-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP and PILAR project Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership nº 2016-1-ES01-KA203-025327 (Platform Integration of Laboratories based on the Architecture of visiR). As well as to the Education Innovation Project (PIE) of UNED, “Desarrollos Avanzados Multi-Objetivo de Laboratorios Remotos para Actividades Educativas – DAMO-LRAE”, from the Vicerrectorado de Ordenación Académica y Calidad and the Instituto Universitario de Educación a Distancia (IUED) of the UNED and to the project 2018-IEQ18 from the Escuela Superior de Ingenieros Industriales of UNED.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

VISIR federation: Initial building steps (PILAR experience – work in progress)

Collaborative working as well as sharing resources and knowledge represent key points in today's development in all fields, including education. Know-how transfer and collaboration in learning and teaching are aspects promoted and sustained by institutional management as well as the European initiatives. Thus, leading to the idea of a federation which will facilitate engineering education. A consortium formed by five European universities decided to join efforts to provide to the community a federation, which could be used by different stakeholders interest in teaching, learning or developing new skills in the field of electronics. The proposed remote system, Virtual Instruments System in Reality, or VISIR in short, offers the possibility of working with real equipment and obtain the real-world/ real-time measurements. By developing such a VISIR federation some of the constraints of using remote labs, the ones associated with development and maintenance costs, and scalability, will be minimized.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Chapter 1

Experimenting is fundamental to the training process of all scientists and engineers. While experiments have been traditionally done inside laboratories, the emergence of Information and Communication Technologies added two alter-natives accessible anytime, anywhere. These two alternatives are known as virtual and remote labs, and are sometimes indistinguishably referred as online labs. Sim-ilarly to other instructional technologies, virtual and remote labs require some ef-fort from teachers in integrating them into curricula, taking into consideration sev-eral factors that affect their adoption (i.e. cost) and their educational effectiveness (i.e. benefit). This chapter analyses these two dimensions and sustains the case where only through international cooperation it is possible to serve the large num-ber of teachers and students involved in engineering education. It presents an ex-ample in the area of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, based on a remote lab named Virtual Instruments System in Reality, and it then describes how a number of European and Latin-American institutions have been cooperating under the scope of an Erasmus+ project2, for spreading its use in Brazil and Argentina.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A federation of online labs for assisting science and engineering education in the MENA Region

Tese de doutoramento, Engenharia Informática, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade do Algarve, 2017Education is now more widely available than ever before. In a great part, this is due to the usage of digital tools, applications and online services by students and teachers. In fact, the Internet has hugely increased the availability of educational resources and also prompted additional collaboration and cooperation among institutions and among countries. Today, active learning methods offer several techniques that have been adopted by teachers to bring efficient learning experiences for the students. Learning by doing promotes successful learning by providing varied experiences to the students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. In addition, with continued practice, the students learn the contents of lessons and develop their skills by using all available resources. This leads to effective learning and effective acquisition of knowledge, and helps in building a strong relationship among students and between them and their teachers. In recent decades, instructional technologies have supported higher education systems well. They have offered several active learning methods to institutions, for instance online labs. Several projects in online labs area are being done worldwide, at present. Generally, the supporting idea of online labs is to offer additional access to remote experiments to students in different disciplines, 24/7 without substantial increase in cost per student around the world and especially in countries with limited resources. Moreover, they allow students to spend more time on experiments and increase their ability and skills through a simple computer connected to the Internet. This study focuses on the higher education systems in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It discusses the level of collaboration and cooperation work among researchers in this region, particularly in online labs fields. It offers new perspectives and new ways to increase that work by creating the Community of Practices (CoP) around online labs and also by promoting the idea of federation new and existing online labs.O ensino é, hoje em dia, mais acessível à generalidade da população mundial do que em qualquer momento do passado. Isso deve-se, em grande parte, à utilização de ferramentas digitais, de aplicações informáticas e de serviços online, pelos professores e pelos estudantes. Com efeito, a Internet fez aumentar imenso a disponibilidade de recursos educativos e, simultaneamente, proporcionou o desenvolvimento dos intercâmbios e das colaborações entre as instituições de ensino superior e entre os diversos países. As várias técnicas que integram os métodos de ensino ativo têm vindo a ser adotadas progressivamente pelos professores, dessa maneira proporcionando aos estudantes percursos de aprendizagem mais aliciantes e mais profícuos. Aprender fazendo promove o sucesso na aprendizagem por via da realização de experiências práticas nos vários domínios da Ciência, Tecnologia, Engenharia e Matemática. Além do que, dessa maneira os estudantes assimilam os conteúdos programáticos e desenvolvem as suas capacidades, atingindo mais eficazmente os objetivos do estudo. Isto conduz a uma aprendizagem mais conseguida e a uma real aquisição de conhecimentos, fomentando, ao mesmo tempo, um relacionamento mais forte entre estudantes e também entre estudantes e professores. Nas últimas décadas, o funcionamento das instituições do ensino superior tem vindo a apoiar-se cada vez mais nas tecnologias de ensino. Entre as diversas tecnologias que foram adotadas, contam-se os laboratórios online. Existem, atualmente, diversos projetos neste domínio, com vasta cobertura. Resumidamente, a visão dos promotores dos laboratórios online é proporcionar aos estudantes das diversas disciplinas acesso remoto a experiências práticas, 24 horas por dia. Isto deve ser conseguido sem que as instituições de ensino superior tenham de incorrer em gastos substanciais, de modo a possibilitar a adoção dos laboratórios online por países que atravessem dificuldades económicas. Com os laboratórios online, os estudantes têm oportunidade de realizar mais experiências do que realizariam de outro modo e, assim, desenvolver mais eficazmente as suas capacidades científicas e tecnológicas. E isso conseguir-se-á por via de um simples computador ligado à Internet. O presente estudo centra-se nos sistemas de ensino superior dos países do Médio Oriente e do Norte de África, em inglês, Middle East and North Africa, MENA. Analisamos, em particular, o nível de colaboração existente entre os investigadores desta região, no domínio dos laboratórios online, e propomos novas perspetivas para o desenvolvimento do trabalho desses investigadores, por meio de da criação de uma comunidade de prática (em inglês community of practice) sobre o tema dos laboratórios online. Adicionalmente, propomos a criação de uma federação de laboratórios online, que agrupará laboratórios dispersos pelo mundo, já existentes ou a criar, assim facilitando a sua utilização à escala mundial

Una Federación de Laboratorios Remotos VISIR a través del Proyecto PILAR

Este documento describe cómo un nuevo proyecto Erasmus+, PILAR (Plataform Integration of Laboratories base don the Architecture of visiR), está siendo desarrollado y cómo la puesta en marcha del partenariado y del proyecto está reforzando la red VISIR (Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality) y el Grupo de Interés Especial de VISIR bajo el Consorcio de Laboratorios online (GOLC - Global Online Laboratory Consortium) de la Asociación Internacional de Ingeniería Online (IAOE - International Association of Online Engineering. La Universidad Española para la Educación a Distancia (UNED) coordina este proyecto que tiene como objetivo federar los sistemas existentes (o nuevos) con el fin de utilizar los recursos de manera más efectiva y eficiente, haciendo transparente para el usuario final la elección de los recursos compartidos.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Laboratórios Remotos: Um Experimento Internacional de Educação em Engenharia

Palestra plenária sobre a utilização de laboratórios remotos como base para a cooperação e colaboração entre Instituições de Ensino Superior e Investigadores da Europa e da América Latina, com especial incidência no Brasil, proferida no 44º Congresso Anual da Sociedade Brasileira de Educação em Engenharia (COBENGE), Natal, RN, Brasil, no dia 28 de Setembro de 2016.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

O Laboratório Remoto VISIR: uma revisão sistemática

O mundo sofre com uma grande carência de profissionais capacitados na área de Engenharias por conta da dificuldade enfrentada por estudantes destas áreas, bem como desmotivação por parte de possíveis ingressantes ao ensino superior. Neste âmbito, surge o laboratório remoto VISIR, solução que busca apoiar o ensino de teoria e prática de circuitos elétricos e eletrônicos, tendo como público-alvo tanto estudantes da educação básica quanto provindos do ensino superior. Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo realizar uma revisão sistemática sobre o laboratório remoto VISIR, suas principais características e funcionalidades e verificar como funciona o projeto VISIR+, realizado a partir de aplicações do laboratório remoto em instituições de ensino. Para tanto, foi realizada uma pesquisa descritiva, exploratória, aplicada e qualitativa. A partir dos resultados adquiridos mediante a pesquisa, foi possível verificar as principais características do laboratório remoto, sendo este uma ferramenta de alto potencial para aplicação no ensino, bem como acerca do projeto VISIR+, que objetiva compartilhar a experiência adquirida com o uso do VISIR em instituições europeias com universidades latino-americanas. Este estudo subsidiará o desenvolvimento de trabalhos futuros, podendo estabelecer-se como fundamentação teórica, bem como ancorar a realização de novas aplicações do laboratório e divulgação do projeto VISIR+.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio