Implementation of labcreator and the integration of cyberlab

With the development of the World Wide Web, online courses are becoming more and more popular in modern science education. CyberLab aims to solve an important issue in distance science education -- laboratory experiments in online courses. It is a toolkit that handles creation, exportation, and execution of virtual experiments (within web browsers). It consists of LabCreator and LabExecutor. With LabCreator, instructors can create virtual experiments and export them into intermediate files. Students can download those files from online course websites and execute them in LabExecutor on their own computers. The paper reports on the completion of two important tasks in the development of CyberLab: (1) the implementation of LabCreator and (2) a system allowing exportation of the experiment to intermediate web accessible format and the loading of the experiment into LabExecutor. The feasibility of the design and structure of CyberLab is proved by integrating the LabCreator and LabExecutor for the first time. The advantage of CyberLab is shown through a demonstration of the deployment of a virtual experiment

Remote experimentation network - yielding an inter-university peer-to-peer e-service

The goal of this paper is to discuss the benefits and challenges of yielding an inter-continental network of remote laboratories supported and used by both European and Latin American Institutions of Higher Education. Since remote experimentation, understood as the ability to carry out real-world experiments through a simple web browser, is already a proven solution for the educational community as a supplement to on-site practical lab work (and in some cases, namely for distance learning courses, a replacement to that work), the purpose is not to discuss its technical, pedagogical, or economical strengths, but rather to raise and try to answer some questions about the underlying benefits and challenges of establishing a peer-to-peer network of remote labs. Ultimately, we regard such a network as a constructive mechanism to help students gain the working and social skills often valued by multinational/global companies, while also providing awareness of local cultural aspects

A Remote Laboratory Experimentation Network

This contribution presents a remote laboratory project with a new business model that aims at bringing physical experimentation back into the learning arena, where remotely operable laboratory experiments used in advanced education and training schemes are made available to a global market. This is done via the Internet using a set of e-commerce and advanced information and communication technology solutions. The project will add online remote experimentation to distance learning techniques. This creates new opportunities for distance learning, in particular within the engineering dis-ciplines where hands-on experience is regarded as essential to acquire knowledge and re-inforce professional skills. We will assemble and integrate remote online experimenta-tion with other multimedia learning resources like virtual reality and simulations, and develop course modules utilising the complementary learning effects of physical experi-ments

Remote Access to Instrumental Analysis for Distance Education in Science

Remote access to experiments offers distance educators another tool to integrate a strong laboratory component within a science course. Since virtually all modern chemical instrumental analysis in industry now use devices operated by a computer interface, remote control of instrumentation is not only relatively facile, it enhances students’ opportunity to learn the subject matter and be exposed to “real world” contents. Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) and Athabasca University are developing teaching laboratories based on the control of analytical instruments in real-time via an Internet connection. Students perform real-time analysis using equipment, methods, and skills that are common to modern analytical laboratories (or sophisticated teaching laboratories). Students obtain real results using real substances to arrive at real conclusions, just as they would if they were in a physical laboratory with the equipment; this approach allows students to access to conduct instrumental science experiments, thus providing them with an advantageous route to upgrade their laboratory skills while learning at a distance.Athabasca University – Canada’s Open University;Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, Canad

The Promise and Realities of the Use of Cyber Technologies for Promoting Research in Public STEM Museum Experiences

Cyberlab at OSU Final Report.A seven-year effort funded by the United States’ National Science Foundation and the Oregon Sea Grant College Program sought to identify and deploy in a public STEM museum setting a suite of digital tools for collecting and supporting analysis of data on the use of the setting in near real time and as evidence for in situ learning. In addition to full-museum camera coverage and data collection, five exhibit-based research platforms were developed to allow for collection of linked video, audio, and digital input (keystroke, touch screen manipulation) data at particular locations in the museum. A further effort explored the use of social media data mining tools as well as apps for research on how learners create continuity across STEM learning experiences distributed temporally and geographically. Returns on investment for research on informal learning were proven to be high with signifiant gains for researchers working with the museum and for building research partnerships with other museums and informal STEM learning environments (e.g., Maker Faires, public exhibits, tourism in marine environments), but return on investment for museum operations and programmatic advancement were relatively minor. While the project proved that a public museum can successfully employ current video-based, cyber-linked technologies to document and study learning outside of a laboratory setting, it also demonstrated that such activity is most likely beyond the budgetary and information technology capacity of most public institutions. However, the project also piloted and provided proof of concept for smaller, mobile efforts using many of the same technologies and tools in scaled-down but efficient research and evaluation efforts.Keywords: Cyberlearning; Informal Learning Environments; STEM; Video-based Researc

The MARVEL EU project: A social constructivist approach to remote experimentation

The work presented in this paper proposes a conceptual model where remote experimentation is envisaged as a tool to achieve instructional objectives via social constructivist learning methods. The conceptual model described considers remote experiments as embedded activities in an e-learning framework that integrates the necessary tools to support the acquisition of theoretical concepts, synchronous communication via video-conferencing, interface panels to the equipments available in the remote workbench, and the necessary management tools to support this architecture. Each remote experiment is perceived by the students as a broader activity (called workshop activity) that enables them to achieve pre-defined learning goals, where collaborative actions and peer-review activities are at the basis of the underlying social constructivist learning model. The outcome of these activities is itself a learning object that provides evidence that the learning goals were achieved

Design Conseptual of Hybrid Project Based Learning-PEPPER in Computer Networking Learning

Learning of vocational school learning should be able to prepare students who have qualified skills to fit the demands of the realistic activity of industry. Professional activities within the workplace should be integrated completed the learning process in the classroom, through pedagogical model design that facilitates learning in order to build students who have the ability to work in accordance with the demands from the industry. Development of model design has been done through collaboration models Project-based learning and PEPPER model through a mix method research. This research resulted a pedagogical syntax of learning model's tools with characteristic's industrial standard, which quantitatively tested in learning of Computer Network, so that the application of this model can improve the presumption of vocational school quality through graduate's quality