O Laboratório Remoto VISIR: uma revisão sistemática

O mundo sofre com uma grande carência de profissionais capacitados na área de Engenharias por conta da dificuldade enfrentada por estudantes destas áreas, bem como desmotivação por parte de possíveis ingressantes ao ensino superior. Neste âmbito, surge o laboratório remoto VISIR, solução que busca apoiar o ensino de teoria e prática de circuitos elétricos e eletrônicos, tendo como público-alvo tanto estudantes da educação básica quanto provindos do ensino superior. Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo realizar uma revisão sistemática sobre o laboratório remoto VISIR, suas principais características e funcionalidades e verificar como funciona o projeto VISIR+, realizado a partir de aplicações do laboratório remoto em instituições de ensino. Para tanto, foi realizada uma pesquisa descritiva, exploratória, aplicada e qualitativa. A partir dos resultados adquiridos mediante a pesquisa, foi possível verificar as principais características do laboratório remoto, sendo este uma ferramenta de alto potencial para aplicação no ensino, bem como acerca do projeto VISIR+, que objetiva compartilhar a experiência adquirida com o uso do VISIR em instituições europeias com universidades latino-americanas. Este estudo subsidiará o desenvolvimento de trabalhos futuros, podendo estabelecer-se como fundamentação teórica, bem como ancorar a realização de novas aplicações do laboratório e divulgação do projeto VISIR+.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/

Why visir? Proliferative activities and collaborative work of visir system

Online laboratories have been increasingly deployed in several universities and institutions around the world. Besides helping to leverage a number of educational developments, they enable teachers and researchers to share their knowledge across institutional boundaries. It has been observed that online laboratories have a positive effect on students' skills acquisition because they promote collaborative work and allow students to perform physical experiments remotely usually 24/7. Today, one can find a wide range of online laboratories in the literature that are supporting many subjects in different engineering and sciences fields, especially in electric and electronic engineering. One such system is VISIR (Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality). VISIR plays an important role in electrical and electronic engineering education by allowing both teachers and students to conduct real experiments with electric and electronic circuits, via the Internet. It also complements hands-on laboratories by serving thousands of students globally, as a result of being spread by several universities and institutes worldwide. Presently, VISIR is installed in eight higher education institutions), in six different countries (Austria, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, India, and Georgia), and is the first remote lab in the world supporting a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). In addition, a number of experiments in VISIR can be freely accessed, using the guest user mode, depending on the institutions available resources. In this study, we have used the data collection method focused on all scholarly papers that are related to the VISIR system, which allowed collecting references from many resources such as conference proceedings, book chapters, and journals. The objective of the paper is to illustrate the researches activities, developments, and studies that contributed to making of VISIR the best remote controlled laboratory in the world, according to the GOLC (Global Online Laboratory Consortium). Our research included the following dimensions: a) courses and subjects that include experiments done in VISIR, from different universities and institutes; b) the number of scholarly papers and authors related to VISIR, with a reference to the publishing sources; c) the different technologies used to deliver the laboratory experiments; d) the total number (and its evolution) of users who have accessed the several VISIR nodes; e) finally, the collaborative work resulting from the use and share of the VISIR system. To conclude, the paper discusses the impact of VISIR in the role of the laboratory in undergraduate engineering education, in particular in electrical and electronic engineering, and its contribution to the collaborative work observed among the academic staff, researchers and students who used it.N/

Fomento de las competencias experimentales utilizando recursos complementarios

[EN]The use of ICT in the academic context is a reality, in the world we live in. The young generation of students is digital native, being immersed in a virtual world during a considerable part of their day. This has an impact in their life, including on their education. In undergraduate engineering education laboratory classes are an integral part of its curriculum. These days, many laboratory classes combine traditional hands-on labs with online labs (remote and virtual labs) and several experimental resources. A “blended” or “hybrid” approach to experimental learning seems the most effective to (students’) experimental learning and the development of competences. Still this technologically mediated resource affects the way students learn and in the literature there is still a lack of works, considering the characterization of didactical implementations using a “blended” or “hybrid” approach and its impact in students’ learning and the way they construct their knowledge. In the Electric and Electronic Engineering topic and using the remote laboratory VISIR there are really very few works, reported in literature, describing some small scaled didactical experiments. The problematic which motivated this work was the need to understand the impact of different didactical approaches using this methodology (simultaneous use of several experimental resources) has on students’ academic results. Ultimately this work intends to contribute to fill a gap identified in the literature: identify factors (including some eventual students’ characteristics) which affect students’ learning and engagement in the electric and electronic circuits topic using the remote lab VISIR along with other complementary resources. To accomplish this end, four research questions where posed, each of them taking into account a set of factors in a specific field of inquiry and its influence on students’ results. The first research question approached the way the several experimental resources could be combined and its effect on students. The second dealt with the influence of the proposed VISIR tasks characteristics on students’ results. The third tackled important teacher mediation traces that could be linked to better students’ performance. And finally, the last research question investigates if there were students’ characteristics that were more associated with good learning outcomes and engagement. Considering the former objectives, it was chosen a multi-case study research methodology, using a mixed method approach, resourcing mainly to questionnaire, interview, documental analysis and observation as data gathering methods, and statistical analysis (descriptive and inferential) and content analysis, as data analysis techniques. A large-scale study analysis was conducted, including 26 courses (in a total of 43 didactical implementations using VISIR, as some of the courses have undergone more than one course implementation edition), comprising 1794 students and involving 52 different teachers. This study took place in several Higher Education Institutions (and at a minor extent, in some Technological and High Schools) in Argentina, Brazil and Portugal. In the southern hemisphere these didactical implementations happened in the 2016 and 2017 academic years while in the northern hemisphere it was possible to collect data from three semesters between 2016/17 and 2018/19 academic years. The study focused on analysing each didactical implementation (their characteristics, teachers’ usage and perception) and the matching students’ results (usage, academic results and perception). Ethical questions to guarantee both students’ and teachers’ privacy was taken care of, when using the data of the participants. The former data was only used for the purposes of this study and the state of the participation was reflected anonymously, which can be observed both in the information collected for the analysis as well as in the transcripts along the text. The study included the analysis of the collected data from various sources, the interpretation of its results using several analysis techniques, and the convergence in a process of triangulation. These results, after discussed with literature, allowed to answer in the most possible complete way the four research questions. Based on them, conclusions were drawn to identify factors that may foster students’ learning and engagement. The study also contributed to the advancement of knowledge in this research area. It allowed to conclude that VISIR and this methodology can be as useful for introductory courses as for more advanced ones (dealing with this thematic) as long as teachers plan the didactical implementation according to the type of course and students’ background. Plus, this methodology based upon VISIR can be applied with high success to courses that do not have an experimental component, nor its contents are directly related to the Electricity and Electronics topic. In these courses VISIR can be used with the purpose of contextualization, providing more interesting and appealing learning environments (e.g. theoretical mathematical courses). Finally, both teachers’ perception and students’ results suggest VISIR target public seems to be the students that require more support in their learning, that is, the students still struggling with difficulties than the more proficient students

Laboratórios remotos: interação remota com braços robóticos e integração com plataformas de e-learning

A realização de atividades práticas em contexto laboratorial desempenha um papel essencial no ensino das engenharias e de outras áreas científicas. Neste sentido, os laboratórios remotos e virtuais estão a ganhar importância e destaque nas escolas e universidades, pois permitem a redução de custos em equipamentos e manutenção, possibilitam a realização de experiências práticas no ensino à distância e permitem a partilha de recursos entre instituições de ensino. Todavia, a avaliação e acompanhamento de atividades em contextos não tradicionais é um processo complexo e demorado, que traz novos desafios para os professores. Facto que pode limitar a adoção generalizada deste tipo de ferramentas. A presente dissertação descreve o processo de análise, conceção, desenvolvimento e avaliação de um protótipo de um laboratório remoto para o ensino de redes de computadores, integrado com a plataforma Inven!RA. Esta, permite a recolha de analytics relevantes durante a realização de planos de atividades, possibilitando assim, que os professores consultem dashboards de acompanhamento que os auxiliem no processo de avaliação da sua intervenção pedagógica, de acordo com o progresso dos alunos, num ambiente integrado com uma plataforma de e-learning. Os resultados obtidos revelam que o protótipo do laboratório criado, permite o desenvolvimento de diversas atividades de redes de computadores, oferece um contributo efetivo ao acompanhamento dos alunos por parte dos professores, acolhe novas dinâmicas de trabalho dentro e fora da sala de aula e promove metodologias ativas de aprendizagem.The realization of practical activities in a laboratory context plays an essential role in the education of engineering and other scientific areas. The use of remote and virtual laboratories has become increasingly popular solutions in schools and universities. Its use allows for a reduction in equipment and maintenance costs, makes it possible to carry out practical experiences in distance learning contexts and allows the sharing of resources between educational institutions. However, the evaluation and monitoring of activities in non-traditional contexts is a complex and time-consuming process, which brings new challenges for instructors. This fact may limit the widespread adoption of this type of tools. This dissertation describes the process of analysis, design, development and evaluation of a prototype for a remote laboratory for computer network education, integrated with the Inven!RA platform. This enables the collection of relevant analytics during the execution of activity plans, which allows teachers to consult monitoring dashboards that helps them in the process of evaluating their pedagogical intervention, according to the student’s progress, in an integrated environment with an e-learning platform. The obtained results reveal that the created prototype of the laboratory, allows the development of several activities for computer networks, offers an effective contribution to the monitoring of students by instructors, welcomes new dynamics of work inside and outside the classroom and promotes active learning methodologies