Merging remote laboratories and enquiry-based learning for STEM education

Practical learning activities are effective ways to increase the interest of students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) topics. Attracting school students to STEM careers is a challenge in many parts of the world. Remote Access Laboratories (RAL) allow for offsite control of state-of-the-art science and technology experiments. Such learning activities, while mostly used in universities, can also provide additional learning opportunities in schools. Current RAL technologies are targeted at undergraduate engineering education and offer limited operational autonomy. Opportunities for collaboration and experiment design are not well supported. However, both are important components of STEM education in schools. This paper discusses how RAL can be adapted to better support enquiry based learning in the context of STEM education. The limitations of current architectures are discussed and approaches to address these are presented

Development and Interaction between LMS Services and Remote Labs

Nowadays there is a great number of universities and organizations working in e-learning and i-learning solutions. One of the most well-known is the learning management system or LMS that allows displaying theoretical content in an organized and controlled way. In some jobs and studies it is necessary for the student to get a practical knowledge as well as a theoretical one. To obtain this practical knowledge, the universities and organizations are developing Virtual, Remote and Web labs. At these moments the LMS and Web labs are working independently. We are studying a new architecture allowing the integration of the LMS with different Web labs. This architecture must allow the students, teachers and administrators to use the services of LMS and virtual lab’s features as if they were working with the same software