Flexible platform for online laboratory experiments in electrical engineering

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-83).This thesis describes a project that is part of the collaboration between MIT and universities in sub-Sahara Africa to exploit the value of iLabs in the developing world. The main goal of this project is to develop software that will exploit the value of the National Instruments Educational Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Suite (ELVIS) system in Africa by integrating it into the iLabs shared architecture, while taking into consideration the special circumstances surrounding the deployment of iLabs in Africa such as bandwidth limitations, limited access to networked computers and lack of computer skills on the part of students. Integrating ELVIS into iLabs will facilitate the rapid deployment of new online labs to augment the Physics and Electrical engineering curricula in these universities. iLab development efforts for this project are being done in parallel with developers at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) in Nigeria. One of the main goals of the new system is to fill the gap of laboratory experiences in introductory level electronics and physics classes, which are hardest hit by the lack of equipment due to their typically large enrollment. Our goal is to support the development of electronic circuit building skills by providing an environment where students can easily try different circuit configurations before submitting experiments for execution. We are therefore investigating new iLab client user interface designs that will enable students to create and edit circuit schematics from provided electronic components. Our ELVIS iLab design will also formalize and simplify the process of creating and administering such labs for instructors, thereby speeding up the deployment of new labs in an environment where software development skills are not at a premium.(cont.) This will be achieved by recycling many of the components that are currently behind the success of the microelectronics weblab, which have already been adapted before for new iLabs. Besides reusing existing software, the project hopes to make a major contribution towards enhancing students experiences with iLabs through its new interactive client design.by Samuel Gikandi.M.Eng

A federation of online labs for assisting science and engineering education in the MENA Region

Tese de doutoramento, Engenharia Informática, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade do Algarve, 2017Education is now more widely available than ever before. In a great part, this is due to the usage of digital tools, applications and online services by students and teachers. In fact, the Internet has hugely increased the availability of educational resources and also prompted additional collaboration and cooperation among institutions and among countries. Today, active learning methods offer several techniques that have been adopted by teachers to bring efficient learning experiences for the students. Learning by doing promotes successful learning by providing varied experiences to the students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. In addition, with continued practice, the students learn the contents of lessons and develop their skills by using all available resources. This leads to effective learning and effective acquisition of knowledge, and helps in building a strong relationship among students and between them and their teachers. In recent decades, instructional technologies have supported higher education systems well. They have offered several active learning methods to institutions, for instance online labs. Several projects in online labs area are being done worldwide, at present. Generally, the supporting idea of online labs is to offer additional access to remote experiments to students in different disciplines, 24/7 without substantial increase in cost per student around the world and especially in countries with limited resources. Moreover, they allow students to spend more time on experiments and increase their ability and skills through a simple computer connected to the Internet. This study focuses on the higher education systems in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It discusses the level of collaboration and cooperation work among researchers in this region, particularly in online labs fields. It offers new perspectives and new ways to increase that work by creating the Community of Practices (CoP) around online labs and also by promoting the idea of federation new and existing online labs.O ensino é, hoje em dia, mais acessível à generalidade da população mundial do que em qualquer momento do passado. Isso deve-se, em grande parte, à utilização de ferramentas digitais, de aplicações informáticas e de serviços online, pelos professores e pelos estudantes. Com efeito, a Internet fez aumentar imenso a disponibilidade de recursos educativos e, simultaneamente, proporcionou o desenvolvimento dos intercâmbios e das colaborações entre as instituições de ensino superior e entre os diversos países. As várias técnicas que integram os métodos de ensino ativo têm vindo a ser adotadas progressivamente pelos professores, dessa maneira proporcionando aos estudantes percursos de aprendizagem mais aliciantes e mais profícuos. Aprender fazendo promove o sucesso na aprendizagem por via da realização de experiências práticas nos vários domínios da Ciência, Tecnologia, Engenharia e Matemática. Além do que, dessa maneira os estudantes assimilam os conteúdos programáticos e desenvolvem as suas capacidades, atingindo mais eficazmente os objetivos do estudo. Isto conduz a uma aprendizagem mais conseguida e a uma real aquisição de conhecimentos, fomentando, ao mesmo tempo, um relacionamento mais forte entre estudantes e também entre estudantes e professores. Nas últimas décadas, o funcionamento das instituições do ensino superior tem vindo a apoiar-se cada vez mais nas tecnologias de ensino. Entre as diversas tecnologias que foram adotadas, contam-se os laboratórios online. Existem, atualmente, diversos projetos neste domínio, com vasta cobertura. Resumidamente, a visão dos promotores dos laboratórios online é proporcionar aos estudantes das diversas disciplinas acesso remoto a experiências práticas, 24 horas por dia. Isto deve ser conseguido sem que as instituições de ensino superior tenham de incorrer em gastos substanciais, de modo a possibilitar a adoção dos laboratórios online por países que atravessem dificuldades económicas. Com os laboratórios online, os estudantes têm oportunidade de realizar mais experiências do que realizariam de outro modo e, assim, desenvolver mais eficazmente as suas capacidades científicas e tecnológicas. E isso conseguir-se-á por via de um simples computador ligado à Internet. O presente estudo centra-se nos sistemas de ensino superior dos países do Médio Oriente e do Norte de África, em inglês, Middle East and North Africa, MENA. Analisamos, em particular, o nível de colaboração existente entre os investigadores desta região, no domínio dos laboratórios online, e propomos novas perspetivas para o desenvolvimento do trabalho desses investigadores, por meio de da criação de uma comunidade de prática (em inglês community of practice) sobre o tema dos laboratórios online. Adicionalmente, propomos a criação de uma federação de laboratórios online, que agrupará laboratórios dispersos pelo mundo, já existentes ou a criar, assim facilitando a sua utilização à escala mundial

Sparking Innovation in STEM Education with Technology and Collaboration

This report highlights innovative technology-supported pedagogic models in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, explores what to expect from collaboration in a designed network, and, thereafter, sketches lessons for promoting educational innovation through collaboration. How can technology-supported learning help to move beyond content delivery and truly enhance STEM education so that students develop a broad mix of skills? How can collaboration be encouraged and used to help develop, spread, accelerate and sustain innovation in education? The HP Catalyst Initiative –an education grant programme by the Hewlett Packard (HP) Sustainability and Social Innovation team – is used as a case study to answer these questions

Cloud e-learning for mechatronics: CLEM

his paper describes results of the CLEM project, Cloud E-learning for Mechatronics. CLEM is an example of a domain-specific cloud that is especially tuned to the needs of VET (Vocational, Education and Training) teachers. An interesting development has been the creation of remote laboratories in the cloud. Learners can access such laboratories to support their practical learning of mechatronics without the need to set up laboratories at their own institutions. The cloud infrastructure enables multiple laboratories to come together virtually to create an ecosystem for educators and learners. From such a system, educators can pick and mix materials to create suitable courses for their students and the learners can experience different types of devices and laboratories through the cloud. The paper provides an overview of this new cloud-based e-learning approach and presents the results. The paper explains how the use of cloud computing has enabled the development of a new method, showing how a holistic e-learning experience can be obtained through use of static, dynamic and interactive material together with facilities for collaboration and innovation

"UH Co.Lab": An Innovative Learning space at the University of Hawaii at Manoa Based on the co-design Methodology and Practice

The nature of the client, architect, and contractor relationship has changed considerably within contemporary architectural practice. Today, clients place more trust in professionals who specialize in non-architectural areas, such as construction costs, rather than architects who specialize in design. While a client might hire both types of parties, this disproportionate placement of trust on one particular party could adversely affect relationship between the client and the architect as well as between the client and other essential specialists. These correlations between client, architect, and other professional key players, in professional practice, are not consistently reflected in architectural education. The relationship in professional practice can be improved by starting at the roots—exposing students to design-communication strategies, thereby preparing them to engage with clients on different levels. Inspired by recent academic curricula in business and design, this dissertation investigates the modern architectural education environment, its alignment with professional practice, and the related impact on learning spaces and curricula. By anticipating new architectural curricula that derive from the profession, current design processes and methods, when combined with client-driven communication concepts from business curricula, will expose students to a variety of architect-client interactions and relationships, will help develop stronger design-communication interaction, and will demand the occurrence of new educational spaces for these interactions. This doctoral project poses the following questions. How can students gain knowledge and confidence when communicating the value of design through client interaction within an academic environment? And, stemming from that, how can the learning spaces facilitate the integration of professional design and communication strategies? Evidence shows that a curriculum that brings interactions regarding client relations into the classroom reveal opportunities for re-envisioned design spaces that accommodate and adapt to new collaborative working models and that foster growth and collective creativity. Past research on business and design curricula, existing design strategies, and communication strategies led to the development of an integrated educational model known as co-design, which has been redefined to inform the design of a new collaborative educational space. This led to the creation of a new type of programmatic educational space, which brings co-design methods into the educational environment and directly supports student engagement with clients

FORGE: An eLearning Framework for Remote Laboratory Experimentation on FIRE Testbed Infrastructure

The Forging Online Education through FIRE (FORGE) initiative provides educators and learners in higher education with access to world-class FIRE testbed infrastructure. FORGE supports experimentally driven research in an eLearning environment by complementing traditional classroom and online courses with interactive remote laboratory experiments. The project has achieved its objectives by defining and implementing a framework called FORGEBox. This framework offers the methodology, environment, tools and resources to support the creation of HTML-based online educational material capable accessing virtualized and physical FIRE testbed infrastruc- ture easily. FORGEBox also captures valuable quantitative and qualitative learning analytic information using questionnaires and Learning Analytics that can help optimise and support student learning. To date, FORGE has produced courses covering a wide range of networking and communication domains. These are freely available from FORGEBox.eu and have resulted in over 24,000 experiments undertaken by more than 1,800 students across 10 countries worldwide. This work has shown that the use of remote high- performance testbed facilities for hands-on remote experimentation can have a valuable impact on the learning experience for both educators and learners. Additionally, certain challenges in developing FIRE-based courseware have been identified, which has led to a set of recommendations in order to support the use of FIRE facilities for teaching and learning purposes

ELVIS iLab

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2008.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (p. 75-76).iLabs are remote online laboratories that allow users to perform experiments through the Internet. As an educational tool the iLab platform enables students and educators, who do not have access to laboratories, to complement their theoretical knowledge by carrying out experiments remotely on equipment located anywhere in the world and at any time of the day. Students perform experiments on actual instruments allowing them to get real data, instead of relying on simulations. The iLab project has been deployed in 3 universities in Africa using the National Instruments Educational Laboratory Virtual Instrument Suite platform which is a cheap all-in-one electronics workstation for electronics experiments. This thesis describes an increase in the functionality available on the current version of the ELVIS iLab in order to enable a wider range of experiments to be run on the platform. The functionalities explored include adding two arbitrary waveform generator channels and bode analyzer for frequency domain analysis, which was not possible in the previous designs.by Adnaan Jiwaji.M.Eng

Design and implementation of the feedback systems Web laboratory

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-103).This thesis describes the design and implementation of a remote web-based laboratory (WebLab) for MIT's 6.302 Feedback Systems course. The WebLab system proposed consists of a three-tiered architecture where client and server communicate with each other via web services. On the front end, the user interacts with the system through the Lab Client's graphical user interface implemented as a Java applet. On the back end, the Lab Server processes experiment requests from users and runs them at the laboratory site. Once the experiment has been completed successfully, the Lab Server sends the measured data to the Lab Client for display on the screen and further manipulation by the user. Furthermore, the WebLab is designed to take advantage of the iLab framework for provision of authentication and authorization services, as well as common administrative tasks, such as user management and logging of experimental results.by Gerardo Viedma Núñez.M.Eng

Overview of modern teaching equipment that supports distant learning

Laboratory is a key element of engineering and applied sciences educational systems. With the development of Internet and connecting IT technologies, the appearance of remote laboratories was inevitable. Virtual laboratories are also available; they place the experiment in a simulated environment. However, this writing focuses on remote experiments not virtual ones. From the students’ point of view, it is a great help not only for those enrolling in distant or online courses but also for those studying in a more traditional way. With the spread of smart, portable devices capable of connection to the internet, students can expand or restructure time spent on studying. This is a huge help to them and also allows them to individually divide their time up, to learn how to self-study. This independent approach can prepare them for working environments. It offers flexibility and convenience to the students. From the universities’ point of view, it helps reduce maintenance costs and universities can share experiments which also helps the not so well-resourced educational facilities