Overview of modern teaching equipment that supports distant learning

Laboratory is a key element of engineering and applied sciences educational systems. With the development of Internet and connecting IT technologies, the appearance of remote laboratories was inevitable. Virtual laboratories are also available; they place the experiment in a simulated environment. However, this writing focuses on remote experiments not virtual ones. From the students’ point of view, it is a great help not only for those enrolling in distant or online courses but also for those studying in a more traditional way. With the spread of smart, portable devices capable of connection to the internet, students can expand or restructure time spent on studying. This is a huge help to them and also allows them to individually divide their time up, to learn how to self-study. This independent approach can prepare them for working environments. It offers flexibility and convenience to the students. From the universities’ point of view, it helps reduce maintenance costs and universities can share experiments which also helps the not so well-resourced educational facilities

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

Interoperability of Remote Laboratories Systems

There has been growing interest in, and development of, remotely accessible laboratories as a mechanism for improving access and flexibility, and enabling sharing of facilities. Differences in focus, philosophy, approach or domain have led to quite different technical solutions in supporting remote laboratories. Whilst this diversity represents a significant strength in terms of the ability to explore different issues and support diverse applications, it does however potentially hamper the sharing of labs between different institutions. Investigation into interoperability between two remote lab platforms has realized a need for a common application protocol to achieve the goals remote labs aims to provide. We describe our approach to providing a bridge between two current remote laboratory architectures Labshares Sahara and MITs iLabs and report on the issues that arise with regard to the protocol translations

PILAR: Plataforma de federación de laboratorios remotos VISIR de electrónica analógica

Resumen—Los laboratorios remotos son ya una herramienta de enseñanza/aprendizaje en diferentes campos de la ingeniería y de la ciencia. El laboratorio remoto VISIR es un ejemplo paradigmático de esta nueva metodología en el campo de la electrónica analógica ya que el alumno puede montar y medir circuitos reales de un modo satisfactorio. En la actualidad en Europa hay cinco instancias desplegadas y activas de VISIR y en Sudamérica hay 5 más, cada una de ellas ofrece distintos circuitos eléctricos y electrónicos de manera que el usuario debe saber dónde está desplegado el circuito que él quiere montar y desplegar para poder acceder a él, lo que es una clara limitación. La solución al problema pasa por federar dicho grupo de laboratorios remotosinfo: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

The AppComposer Web application for school teachers: A platform for translating and adapting educational web applications

International audienc

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

RELLE: Sistema de Gerenciamento de Experimentos Remotos

TCC (graduação) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Campus Araranguá. Bacharelado em Tecnologias da Informação e Comunicação.Este trabalho trata do desenvolvimento de um sistema de gerenciamento de experimentos remotos, utilizando uma arquitetura baseada em módulos de hardware e software capazes de oferecer a usuários acesso remoto à laboratórios em diversas áreas do conhecimento. A solução foi concebida utilizando uma arquitetura baseada em soluções open source e de baixo custo, e que podem ser utilizados em diferentes níveis de ensino. A arquitetura é baseada em quatro módulos: o Laboratório Real, que trata dos experimentos, Computador Embarcado, que compreende a parte de disponibilização do experimento na rede, RELLE, que é o sistema de gerenciamento, e Cliente, que trata do modelo de acesso utilizado para manipulação dos experimentos. O trabalho foi desenvolvido em três fases nomeadas Planejamento, Protótipo, e Validação, baseadas no método Merise, que é uma metodologia que aborda todas as fases do desenvolvimento de sistemas de informação. O cliente para comunicação com os experimentos foi desenvolvido utilizando o framework PHP Laravel junto ao framework CSS Bootstrap. No desenvolvimento do cliente foi utilizada a metodologia ágil para desenvolvimento de software Scrum. O cliente pode ser acessado através de dispositivos móveis ou convencionais, e tem funções de gerenciamento de usuários e experimentos, além de integração com o ambiente virtual de aprendizagem Moodle, que fornece suporte documental e didático aos experimentos. O ambiente foi avaliado por especialistas da área de educação e tecnologias e experimentação remota, e foi aplicado em turmas experimentais no ensino básico e superior.This work approaches the development of a remote labs management system using an architecture based on hardware and software modules, capable of offering users remote access to laboratories in various fields of knowledge. The solution was designed using an architecture based on open source and cost effective solutions, and can be used at different levels of education. The architecture is based on four modules: the Laboratory, referring to the experiments, Embedded Computer, providing the lab access through the internet, RELLE, which is the management system, and Client, about the access model used for the manipulation of experiments. The study was conducted in three phases named planning, prototype, and validation, based on Merise method, which is a methodology that addresses all phases of the development of information systems. The client for communication with the experiments was developed using the PHP framework Laravel and the CSS framework Bootstrap. It was used Scrum agile methodology on the client development. The client can be accessed through mobile or conventional devices, and has user management functions and experiments, as well as integration with the virtual learning environment Moodle, which provides documentary and educational support to the labs. The environment was evaluated by experts from the field of technology in education and remote experimentation, and was applied in experimental classes in primary, secondary and higher education

Understanding Collaboration in Virtual Labs: A Learning Analytics Framework

Online education is increasing and progress within technology has inspired the development of virtual laboratories, which allow students to conduct experiments online. One of the main challenges of virtual laboratory environments is facilitating collaboration similar to those existing in physical laboratory settings. This research explores how one can obtain a better understanding of collaboration in virtual labs through the use of learning analytics. The research work of this thesis was carried out within the frame of design science research, where the main contribution is an artefact in the form of a learning analytics framework. The aim of the artefact is to provide a guiding framework for the integration of learning analytics to better understand and support learning and collaboration in virtual labs. The artefact was evaluated in two iterations using semi-structured interviews with seven experts. It was found through the artefact development process that social network anal- ysis, statistical analysis, natural language processing, and sentiment analysis are valuable data analysis methods for identifying patterns within collaboration in virtual labs. A proposal of a learning analytics dashboard has proved to be a valuable tool to visualise the analysis to the stakeholders in question (students and instructor). The overall reception of the framework was understandable and well-presented. The contribution of this research provides opportunities for future work which involves putting the framework into practice. The implementation of learning analytics to support collaboration in virtual labs can make it easier for students to reflect on their own performances and thereafter improve from it, as well as supporting instructors to reflect on their teaching methods and provide assistance to students in need.Masteroppgave i informasjonsvitenskapINFO390MASV-INF