Using remote laboratory eLab3D for a broader practical skills training in electronics

This paper briefly presents some relevant aspects of an innovative educational resource that allows real experimentation through Internet in the area of electronics. The developed platform, named eLab3D, is based in a 3D environment in which the user can conduct all the operations that he/she would carried out in a hands-on laboratory. The authors intend to demonstrate the basic operation of the platform to perform electronics experiments

Laboratorio remoto eLab3D: un mundo virtual inmersivo para el aprendizaje de la electrónica

En este artículo se presenta un recurso educativo novedoso, basado en un laboratorio remoto, que permite a los estudiantes, a través de Internet, la realización de experimentos reales en el área de la electrónica. Se ha creado un mundo virtual 3D donde los usuarios, a través de sus avatares, pueden interaccionar con réplicas virtuales de instrumentos, placas de circuitos, componentes o cables y con compañeros y profesores, de forma similar a como lo harían en un laboratorio presencial. Este recurso ofrece múltiples posibilidades que pueden ser muy útiles en los diferentes niveles educativos. Se han llevado a cabo algunas experiencias educativas de utilización de la plataforma con el fin de valorar sus posibilidades docentes y los resultados obtenidos han sido muy positivos. ABSTRACT. This paper presents an innovative educational resource, based on a remote laboratory, which allows users to conduct real experiments through Internet in the area of electronics. A 3D virtual world has been created in which users, by means of their avatars, can interact with virtual replicas of instruments, circuit boards, components or cables and with peers and teachers, as they would in a traditional laboratory. This resource offers multiple possibilities that can be very useful in the different education levels. Some educative experiences have been carried out using the platform to evaluate its educational possibilities and the obtained results have been very positive

Laboratorio Remoto eLab3D, un recurso complementario en la formación del ingeniero

Descripción básica de la plataforma eLab3D y su uso en varias experiencias docentes son estudiantes universitarios y de educación secundaria. ABSTRACT. Experimental training is essential in developing the whole set of skills that an engineer must acquire. Therefore, any resource that involves an improvement in the practical training is an issue of interest to the academia. eLab3D is an electronics remote laboratory based on a configurable hardware and 3D virtual world, that allows students to perform real experiments with analog electronic circuits. This article provides a SWOT analysis about remote laboratories compiled from recent publications and presents some relevant results of the use of eLab3D in real educational contexts, concerning the teachers’ assessment of its potential and the students’ perceived satisfaction

Utilización del laboratorio remoto eLab3D en la enseñanza de la electrónica analógica

Este trabajo muestra el grado de adquisición de los objetivos de aprendizaje que pueden alcanzar los estudiantes en un laboratorio de electrónica mediante la utilización de eLab3D. Además se presentan los resultados obtenidos en una experiencia realizada con estudiantes de una titulación de grado de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid en la que se ha evaluado la eficacia, a nivel de aprendizaje, al utilizar la plataforma eLab3D

International collaborative learning using remote workbenches for 8-bit microcontroller courses

Although many remote laboratory prototypes have been described in the literature during the past fifteen years, there is still a remarkable lack of integration with e-learning frameworks. Most of the proposed solutions do not go beyond technical aspects, which were important to overcome the initial technical difficulties created by high communication latencies, firewall problems, etc. The work presented in this paper balances technical and pedagogical concerns, and proposes an international collaborative framework based on remote workbenches supporting 8-bit microcontroller courses, that are currently available to students in Portugal and South Australia

Remote Laboratory NetLab for Effective Teaching of 1st Year Engineering Students

Practical skills are important attributes of every engineering graduate. The Internet has provided tertiary education with the opportunity to develop innovative learning environments. The teaching and learning of practical skills has gained a new dimension with the emergence of remote laboratories. The rapidly growing number of remote laboratories (RL) worldwide is the evidence that the educational community has recognized their potential to develop into a creative, flexible, engaging, and student-cantered learning environment. Even a brief review of the existing RLs shows a large diversity in their structure, design and implementation. However, not many researchers disclose how their RLs are integrated within their curricula. Therefore, an important question still remains to be answered: how to optimize the design of RLs and their integration in a course curriculum for the best learning outcomes? This problem is particularly important when RLs are used in teaching 1st year students who have limited technical knowledge and practical experience in using real equipment. In this paper we would like to share our experiences with NetLab, an RL developed at the University of South Australia (UniSA) for teaching 1st year engineering students and make recommendations for improvements in teaching practices based on it

Enriching remote labs with computer vision and drones

165 p.With the technological advance, new learning technologies are being developed in order to contribute to better learning experience. In particular, remote labs constitute an interesting and a practical way that can motivate nowadays students to learn. The studen can at anytime, and from anywhere, access the remote lab and do his lab-work. Despite many advantages, remote tecnologies in education create a distance between the student and the teacher. Without the presence of a teacher, students can have difficulties, if no appropriate interventions can be taken to help them. In this thesis, we aim to enrich an existing remote electronic lab made for engineering students called "LaboREM" (for remote Laboratory) in two ways: first we enable the student to send high level commands to a mini-drone available in the remote lab facility. The objective is to examine the front panels of electronic measurement instruments, by the camera embedded on the drone. Furthermore, we allow remote student-teacher communication using the drone, in case there is a teacher present in the remote lab facility. Finally, the drone has to go back home when the mission is over to land on a platform for automatic recharge of the batteries. Second, we propose an automatic system that estimates the affective state of the student (frustrated/confused/flow) in order to take appropriate interventions to ensure good learning outcomes. For example, if the studen is having major difficulties we can try to give him hints or to reduce the difficulty level of the lab experiment. We propose to do this by using visual cues (head pose estimation and facil expression analysis). Many evidences on the state of the student can be acquired, however these evidences are incomplete, sometims inaccurate, and do not cover all the aspects of the state of the student alone. This is why we propose to fuse evidences using the theory of Dempster-Shafer that allows the fusion of incomplete evidence

A Knowledge Based Educational (KBEd) framework for enhancing practical skills in engineering distance learners through an augmented reality environment

The technology advancement has changed distance learning teaching and learning approaches, for example, virtual laboratories are increasingly used to deliver engineering courses. These advancements enhance the distance learners practical experience of engineering courses. While most of these efforts emphasise the importance of the technology, few have sought to understand the techniques for capturing, modelling and automating the on-campus laboratory tutors’ knowledge. The lack of automation of tutors’ knowledge has also affected the practical learning outcomes of engineering distance learners. Hence, there is a need to explore further on how to integrate the tutor's knowledge, which is necessary for imparting and assessing practical skills through current technological advances in distance learning. One approach to address this concern is through the use of Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) principles. These KBE principles facilitate the utilisation of standardised methods for capturing, modelling and embedding experts’ knowledge into engineering design applications for the automation of product design. Hence, utilising such principles could facilitate, automating engineering laboratory tutors’ knowledge for teaching and assessing practical skills. However, there is limited research in the application of KBE principles in the educational domain. Therefore, this research explores the use of KBE principles to automate instructional design in engineering distance learning technologies. As a result, a Knowledge Based Educational (KBEd) framework that facilitates the capturing, modelling and automating on-campus tutors’ knowledge and introduces it to distance learning and teaching approaches. This study used a four-stage experimental approach, which involved rapid prototyping method to design and develop the proposed KBEd framework to a functional prototype. The developed prototype was further refined through internal and external expert group using face validity methods such as questionnaire, observation and discussion. The refined prototype was then evaluated through welding task use-case. The use cases were assessed by first year engineering undergraduate students with no prior experience of welding from Birmingham City University. The participants were randomly separated into two groups (N = 46). One group learned and practised basic welding in the proposed KBEd system, while the other learned and practised in the conventional on-campus environment. A concurrent validity assessment was used in determining the usefulness of the proposed system in learning hands-on practical engineering skills through proposed KBEd system. The results of the evaluation indicate that students who trained with the proposed KBEd system successfully gained the practical skills equivalent to those in the real laboratory environment. Although there was little performance variation between the two groups, it was rooted in the limitations of the system’s hardware. The learning outcomes achieved also demonstrated the successful application of KBE principles in capturing, modelling and transforming the knowledge from the real tutor to the AI tutor for automating the teaching and assessing of the practical skills for distance learners. Further the data analysis has shown the potential of KBEd to be extendable to other taught distance-learning courses involving practical skills