An internet of laboratory things

By creating “an Internet of Laboratory Things” we have built a blend of real and virtual laboratory spaces that enables students to gain practical skills necessary for their professional science and engineering careers. All our students are distance learners. This provides them by default with the proving ground needed to develop their skills in remotely operating equipment, and collaborating with peers despite not being co-located. Our laboratories accommodate state of the art research grade equipment, as well as large-class sets of off-the-shelf work stations and bespoke teaching apparatus. Distance to the student is no object and the facilities are open all hours. This approach is essential for STEM qualifications requiring development of practical skills, with higher efficiency and greater accessibility than achievable in a solely residential programme

Digital, material and networked: some emerging themes for SET education

Boundaries between the digital and material worlds are becoming blurred as the internet increasingly connects us to things as well as people and information. This is increasingly relevant to education as initiatives which significantly combine digital and material elements in networks are becoming a reality for Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) learning. Our paper reports on the initial findings of a project to carry out a ‘state of the art’ review of literature to establish the key themes, opportunities and obstacles that are emerging from the development and use of these ‘hybrid’ systems in learning. We wanted to explore the extent to which this new domain of study is being reported in the literature and to identify work representative of this area. Our aim was to investigate the depth of research in this area by going beyond the technologically descriptive to focus on pedagogical and organisational issues raised in the literature. To identify the state of current research in the area we carried out a systematic search of databases of Science, Engineering and Technology education literature. We found 808 papers relating to the hybrid learning initiatives we are interested in, of which the majority, 81%, involved the Engineering and Technology disciplines while 6.8% related to Science. The vast majority of papers referred to remote laboratories and most of these were concerned with describing the technologies involved. In order to explore issues emerging from the research, we carried out an in-depth text review of a particular subset of the papers found that focussed on pedagogical issues. The three main themes that emerged were: the importance of real data and authenticity in learning; the importance of a sense of presence (e.g. telepresence, social presence and/or immersion) and the locus of control in, and responsiveness of, a hybrid system. We conclude that these new digital ‘hybrid’ pedagogies offer a lens with which to view both the more traditional material pedagogies, e.g. laboratory-based learning, and purely digital pedagogies, e.g. virtual labs. Finally, issues of authenticity, presence and control/responsiveness will be of increasing pedagogical importance to other ‘hybrid’ systems, such as those involving ubiquitous computing

HELP – Home Electronics Laboratory Platform –Development And Evaluation

In response to the COVID pandemic, many of our undergraduate students were supplied with custom development kits to undertake their electronic laboratory activities at home. Following our return to on-campus teaching, we plan to combine on-campus laboratory sessions with at-home experiments taking advantage of both on-campus and at-home experimental work while avoiding some of the limitations experienced during remote teaching. The goal is to embed active learning as a key part of a long-term strategy to enable students to better manage their learning and to maximise the analytical engagement with lecturers in a hybrid blend of on-campus and remote activities. In this paper, we report on three generations of the at-home laboratory kit developed by the author\u27s institute and partners in the Erasmus+ project “Home Electronics Laboratory Platform (HELP)”. The HELP kit comprises a portable signal generator and measurement instrument and a custom electronic board, which includes several functional blocks alongside the usual breadboard for assembling circuits with discrete components. The motivation for the design of each generation is introduced and the desired functionality and its implementation are described. The impact and user experience with the kits have been assessed through student surveys and staff focus groups in the HELP consortium partners. The main themes associated with take-home electronics laboratories have also been explored in a workshop with HELP partners and contributors from other universities across Europe and the USA. This work is summarised and future potential technical and pedagogical developments are outlined

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

Large-scale training simulators for industry and academia

How should industrial large-scale simulators be used in academia? Which aspects of industrial training can benefit engineering education? This article demonstrates the use of industrial large-scale simulators for educational and training purposes for both academia and industry. The didactic models of the simulator courses are described and the learning results are evaluated for two case examples using the same industrial oil and gas process simulator. The differences and similarities of the didactic models of the courses are explored and the further possibilities for collaboration between academia and industry are outlined

Integrating commercial process simulators into engineering courses

Abstract: The aim of this article is to encourage university lecturers to utilize commercial process simulation software in engineering courses. This article provides examples on four different simulation modules which are implemented in chemical and electrical engineering courses at Oslo and Akershus University College. The students have given positive evaluation on the learning through the simulation exercises and considered the simulation tool easy to use. Together with the exam results the student feedback indicates enhanced learning outcom

Aprendizaje a partir de maneras complementarias de desarrollar capacidades experimentales

Engineering education has solid needs of experimental competences development. Nowadays these competences can be worked not only in traditional laboratories (hands on) but also through the use of computer simulations and remote labs. The use of diversified methods in education and the exploration of new resources and techniques in classroom may allow teachers to motivate more students, and capture their attention due to their different learning styles. The main objective of this project is to better understand the effects on students’ learning outcomes in different contexts (country, type of institution, background, etc.). Students are subjected to similar design approaches that all use an enquiry-based teaching and learning methodology. The methodology of the didactical implementation is based on the simultaneous use of experimental resources (hands on, simulation and remote labs) together with calculus, in class and assessment. To accomplish this research, several insights must be taken into consideration, including the teachers’ mediation in class, in each case, and the didactical implementations adaptations, but also external factors, such as socio-cultural and/ or political factors.La educación en ingeniería tiene sólidas necesidades de desarrollo de competencias experimentales. Hoy en día estas competencias pueden desarrollarse no solo en los laboratorios tradicionales (hands-on), sino también a través de simulaciones y laboratorios remotos. El uso de métodos diversificados en la educación y la exploración de nuevos recursos y técnicas en el aula puede permitir que los maestros motiven a más estudiantes y capten su atención. El objetivo principal de este diseño es comprender mejor los efectos sobre los resultados de aprendizaje de los estudiantes en diferentes contextos (país, tipo de institución, etc.), cuando están sujetos a enfoques de diseño similares utilizando una metodología de enseñanza y aprendizaje basada en la investigación. Esta metodología emplea el uso simultáneo de recursos experimentales (handson, simulaciones y laboratorios remotos) junto con cálculo, en clase y en evaluación. Para lograr este objetivo, hay que tener en cuenta varios puntos de vista, como la mediación de los profesores en cada caso y las adaptaciones didácticas, además de factores externos, como por ejemplo los factores socioculturales y/o políticos.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio