Design of a Remote Signal Processing Student Lab

[EN] We describe our experience of introducing digital signal processing (DSP) concepts via a software-defined radio project using a very inexpensive TV USB capture dongle. Through a series of weekly lab exercises, the students learned and applied DSP concepts to design a completely digital FM receiver. The proposed lab experience introduced concepts, such as sampling, IQ signal representation, sample rate conversion, filter design, filter delays, and more, all with an attractive learn-by-doing approach. The first offering of this course initially took place in Fall 2014 and has been successfully offered and repeated with growing success ever since. Our experience can serve as a proof of concept of the possibility of carrying out, in a massive open online course-like fashion, certain engineering labs that require inexpensive and readily available hardware components.This work was supported by the Universidad Internacional de la Rioja through the Research Institute for Innovation and Technology in Education.Albiol Colomer, A.; Corbi, A.; Burgos, D. (2017). Design of a Remote Signal Processing Student Lab. IEEE Access. 5:16068-16076. doi:10.1109/ACCESS.2017.2736165S1606816076

Computer vision based two-wheel self-balancing Rover featuring Arduino and Raspberry Pi

Holistic control system for a self-balancing robot with two wheels with several functionalities added to it, such as remote terminal control, and computer vision based algorithms

FORGE: An eLearning Framework for Remote Laboratory Experimentation on FIRE Testbed Infrastructure

The Forging Online Education through FIRE (FORGE) initiative provides educators and learners in higher education with access to world-class FIRE testbed infrastructure. FORGE supports experimentally driven research in an eLearning environment by complementing traditional classroom and online courses with interactive remote laboratory experiments. The project has achieved its objectives by defining and implementing a framework called FORGEBox. This framework offers the methodology, environment, tools and resources to support the creation of HTML-based online educational material capable accessing virtualized and physical FIRE testbed infrastruc- ture easily. FORGEBox also captures valuable quantitative and qualitative learning analytic information using questionnaires and Learning Analytics that can help optimise and support student learning. To date, FORGE has produced courses covering a wide range of networking and communication domains. These are freely available from FORGEBox.eu and have resulted in over 24,000 experiments undertaken by more than 1,800 students across 10 countries worldwide. This work has shown that the use of remote high- performance testbed facilities for hands-on remote experimentation can have a valuable impact on the learning experience for both educators and learners. Additionally, certain challenges in developing FIRE-based courseware have been identified, which has led to a set of recommendations in order to support the use of FIRE facilities for teaching and learning purposes

Genuine lab experiences for students in resource constrained environments: The RealLab with integrated intelligent assessment.

Laboratory activities are indispensable for developing engineering skills. Computer Aided Learning (CAL) tools can be used to enhance laboratory learning in various ways, the latest approach being the virtual laboratory technique that emulates traditional laboratory processes. This new approach makes it possible to give students complete and genuine laboratory experiences in situations constrained by limited resources in the provision of laboratory facilities and infrastructure and/or where there is need for laboratory education, for large classes, with only one laboratory stand. This may especially be the case in countries in transition. Most existing virtual laboratories are not available for purchase. Where they are, they may not be cost friendly for resource constrained environments. Also, most do not integrate any form of assessment structure. In this paper, we present a very cost friendly virtual laboratory solution for genuine laboratory experiences in resource constrained environments, with integrated intelligent assessment