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ABSTRACT: Remote laboratories increasingly have been used in engineering and science education as a complementary tool to traditional proximal laboratories. In some cases, they replace real laboratories to enable students' access to otherwise unavailable or unique equipment and facilities, or to expose students to a unique educational experience. Such a unique experience is an opportunity to collaborate over the Internet with other students either in the same city, the same country or internationally. The latter case adds an extra dimension to the development of communication and collaboration skills required to conduct technical experiments on real components, instruments and systems. Challenges may arise due to different culture, language and learning habits. This paper reports on the authors' and their students' experiences with international collaboration in the remote laboratory NetLab. These experiences are compared with feedback provided by domestic students and observation of their performance by supervising academics. Preliminary recommendations are formulated for effective international collaboration in remote laboratories

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ABSTRACT: Some requirements for engineering programmes, such as an ability to use the techniques, skills and modern engineering tools necessary for engineering practice, as well as an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility or an ability to communicate effectively, need new activities designed for measuring students' progress. Negotiations take place continuously at any stage of a project and, so, the ability of engineers and managers to effectively carry out a negotiation is crucial for the success or failure of projects and businesses. Since it involves communication between individuals motivated to come together in an agreement for mutual benefit, it can be used to enhance these personal abilities. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the adequacy of mixing playing sessions and theory to maximise the students' strategic vision in combination with negotiating skills. Results show that the combination of playing with theoretical training teaches students to strategise through analysis and discussion of alternatives. The outcome is then more optimised