Improving the use of remote laboratories. The case of VISIR at Universidad Nacional de Rosario

The present work originates in the Project "Educational Modules for Electric and Electronic Circuits Theory and Practice following an Inquiry-based Teaching and Learning Methodology supported by VISIR", carried out with the support of the Erasmus+ Programme. Remote labs can provide a framework where physical experiments can be developed for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education. Although remote labs have been in use for over a decade now in several countries and levels of education, their use is not yet being generalized in Latin America. Through the VISIR+ International Cooperation Project from the Erasmus+ Programme, five higher education institutions from Latin America have incorporated de VISIR remote lab in order to carry out experiments with electric and electronic circuits. In the present work, the results of the study developed at Universidad Nacional de Rosario within the framework of the aforementioned project are shown.This work was carried out with the economic support of the European Commission through Project 561735-EPP-12015-1-PTEPPKA2-CBHE-JP and by Universidad Nacional de Rosario, through Project PID 1ING505.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A teacher training workshop to promote the use of the VISIR Remote Laboratory for electrical circuits teaching

The learning of Physics involves building up and using lab experiments. In turn, teachers must be trained in experimenting and using several resources that enable them to design valuable teaching strategies and learning activities. Thanks to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), virtual and remote labs can provide a framework where physical experiments can be developed. Altough remote labs have been in use for over a decade now in several countries and levels of education, its use at secondary schools in Latin America has not been reported yet. The Virtual Instruments System in Reality (VISIR) is one of these remote labs, suitable to practice in the area of electrical circuits. This paper aims at describing how this remote lab was used in a training workshop for secondary school level teachers of Physics in Costa Rica.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The VISIR Implementation Process at IFSC - problems, obstacles and solutions

In recent year, the use of remote laboratories applied to teaching has been more frequent in several educational institutions around the world. The benefits on the learning process are easy to verify. In addition, remote laboratories bring in their application, operational advantages associated to component inventory, equipment maintenance, security, and others practical issues. Considering this, it is intuitive that the implantation of a remote laboratory and its use is easily recognized and accepted by the users, namely, students and teachers. This paper aims to present the obstacles and advantages observed in the implantation of the virtual laboratory VISIR (Virtual Instruments Systems in Reality) at Federal Institute of Santa Catarina - IFSC, as well as the obtained results.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

VISIR federation: Initial building steps (PILAR experience – work in progress)

Collaborative working as well as sharing resources and knowledge represent key points in today's development in all fields, including education. Know-how transfer and collaboration in learning and teaching are aspects promoted and sustained by institutional management as well as the European initiatives. Thus, leading to the idea of a federation which will facilitate engineering education. A consortium formed by five European universities decided to join efforts to provide to the community a federation, which could be used by different stakeholders interest in teaching, learning or developing new skills in the field of electronics. The proposed remote system, Virtual Instruments System in Reality, or VISIR in short, offers the possibility of working with real equipment and obtain the real-world/ real-time measurements. By developing such a VISIR federation some of the constraints of using remote labs, the ones associated with development and maintenance costs, and scalability, will be minimized.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Using a 3-tier Training Model for Effective Exchange of Good Practices in as ERASMUS+ Project

VISIR+ is an Erasmus+ project that aims to develop educational modules for electric and electronic circuits theory and practice following an enquiry-based teaching and learning methodology. The project has installed five new VISIR remote labs in Higher Education Institutions located in Argentina and Brazil, to allow students doing more experiments and hence acquire better experimental skills, through a combination of traditional (hands-on), remote and virtual laboratories. A key aspect for the success of this project was to motivate and train teachers in the underpinning educational methodology. As such, VISIR+ adopted a 3-tier training process to effectively support the use of VISIR in the Institutions that received it. This process is based on the “train the trainer” approach, which required the participating partner institutions to identify and engage a number of associated partners, interested in using their newly installed remote lab. To measure the quality of the training process, the same satisfaction questionnaire was used in all training actions. This paper presents a detailed description of the training actions along with the analysis of the satisfaction questionnaire results. Major conclusions are that the quality level of the training process remained practically the same across all training actions and that trainees sometimes considered the practical use of the VISIR remote lab as difficult, irrespectively of where and when the training action took place.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Diseño de instrumentos para la investigación sobre la implementación educativa del laboratorio remoto VISIR en Latinoamérica

El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo general describir los instrumentos de investigación diseñados para el seguimiento de la implementación de los Módulos Educativos sobre teoría y práctica de circuitos eléctricos y electrónicos con el apoyo del laboratorio remoto VISIR (Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality) en instituciones de educación superior de Brasil y Argentina en el marco del proyecto VISIR+. Los objetivos particulares son: describir las dimensiones técnicas y pedagógicas que se desprenden de los propósitos del Proyecto VISIR y definir cómo se operacionalizan en el diseño de los instrumentos para la recolección de datos destinados a los profesores y alumnos que participan en la implementación de los módulos. La investigación educativa ofrece herramientas que se fundamentan en posturas epistemológicas diversas y que pueden reconocerse en las decisiones que se toman al elaborar un diseño de investigación. A través de esta presentación, se espera contribuir a acercar ámbitos habitualmente disociados tales como la docencia, la ciencia y la tecnología, la innovación educativa y la investigación en la educación para la ingeniería.N/

VISIR en temas introductorios de electrónica circuital: el punto de vista de los estudiantes

A partir de la participación de la Universidad Nacional de Rosario (UNR) en el proyecto VISIR+, la asignatura Física de los Dispositivos Electrónicos (FDE), de Ingeniería Electrónica (IE), ha incorporado curricularmente actividades experimentales con empleo del laboratorio “Virtual Instruments System in Reality” (VISIR) en sucesivos dictados desde 2016. En esta asignatura, VISIR es empleado como complemento del laboratorio tradicional a posteriori de la última actividad de diseño experimental que involucra el estudio de aplicaciones circuitales sencillas con transistor bipolar. Este trabajo tiene como objetivo describir la experiencia llevada a cabo en FDE, así como presentar los resultados que surgen de la evaluación de la misma luego de finalizadas tres implementaciones didácticas, con participación de 51 estudiantes del tercer año de la carrera. La investigación incluyó la aplicación de un cuestionario validado previamente, compuesto por 20 ítems, escala Likert 1-4. El estudio involucró análisis estadístico descriptivo, con posterior agrupamiento y re-categorización de variables a los efectos de concluir sobre cuatro dimensiones de análisis vinculadas al punto de vista de los estudiantes: 1) aprendizajes percibidos, 2) aceptación de VISIR, 3) orientación percibida, 4) dificultades de tiempo y limitaciones técnicas.N/

Chapter 1

Experimenting is fundamental to the training process of all scientists and engineers. While experiments have been traditionally done inside laboratories, the emergence of Information and Communication Technologies added two alter-natives accessible anytime, anywhere. These two alternatives are known as virtual and remote labs, and are sometimes indistinguishably referred as online labs. Sim-ilarly to other instructional technologies, virtual and remote labs require some ef-fort from teachers in integrating them into curricula, taking into consideration sev-eral factors that affect their adoption (i.e. cost) and their educational effectiveness (i.e. benefit). This chapter analyses these two dimensions and sustains the case where only through international cooperation it is possible to serve the large num-ber of teachers and students involved in engineering education. It presents an ex-ample in the area of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, based on a remote lab named Virtual Instruments System in Reality, and it then describes how a number of European and Latin-American institutions have been cooperating under the scope of an Erasmus+ project2, for spreading its use in Brazil and Argentina.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Spreading the VISIR remote lab along Argentina. The experience in Patagonia

The learning of technical and science disciplines requires experimental and practical training. Hands-on labs are the natural scenarios where practical skills can be developed but, thanks to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), virtual and remote labs can provide a framework where Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines can also be developed. One of these remote labs is the Virtual Instruments System in Reality (VISIR), specially designed to practice in the area of analog electronics. This paper aims at describing how this remote lab is being used in the Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia San Juan Bosco (UNPSJB - Argentina), in the framework of the VISIR+ project funded by the Erasmus+ Program, one institution without previous experiences with remote labs.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio