Providing equivalent learning activities with software-based remote access laboratories

Laboratory-based learning activities are important components of engineering and surveying education and it is difficult to offering practical activities to distance education students. Remote Access Laboratory (RAL) systems are widely discussed as learning tools to offer students remote access to rigs or hardware. In some disciplines laboratory activities are purely software based and RAL systems can be used to provide access to software. As part of a larger study into the transferability of the remote laboratory concept to non-engineering disciplines this project evaluates the effectiveness of RAL based software activities in supporting student learning is investigated. In the discipline of Surveying and Spatial Science, RAL technology is used to provide Geographic Information System software access to distance students. The key research question discussed in this paper is whether RALbased software activities can address the same learning outcomes as face-to-face practical classes for software activities. Data was collected from students' discussion forums, teaching staff diaries and teaching staff interviews. The project demonstrates that students undertaking learning activities remotely achieve similar learning outcomes than student in practice classes using the same software. Ease of system access and usability are critical and the learning activity needs to be supported by comprehensive learning materials. This research provides a clear case in which the use of RAL technology has provided inclusive educational opportunities more efficiently and these general results are also applicable to experiments that involve physical hardware

Work in progress: a novel method of creating an academic content repository

This paper outlines a project aimed at addressing the issue of the scalability of online academic support. This project is being run during the Autumn semester at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) Toowoomba Australia, in conjunction with the Australian Digital Futures Institute. The study attached to the project will use Design-Based Research to evaluate the effectiveness of a simple, but innovative academic content and metadata creation tool referred to as Academic Assist. Academic Assist has been recently developed at USQ as a plug-in block for the moodle-based Learning Management System employed at USQ for its several hundred online subjects. The pilot project and associated study now extends over nine subjects, including three consecutive subjects in computer engineering; and covers faculties of Engineering, Education, Business, Science and Arts. Some preliminary results are presented here. Complete results of the study including acceptance surveys, expert reviews and usage statistics will be presented at FIE 2009

Quality of experience of online learning tools

Online learning tools have become important components of teaching and course delivery. This paper discusses the issues surrounding research into Quality of Experience (QoE) for online learning tools and how it relates to technical performance, Quality of Service (QoS). The relationship between QoE and QoS for online learning tools is often considered important for describing the optimal conditions for online learning environments. Such research largely ignores the vital issue of how learners differ from consumers in their use of information and communication technologies such as interactive multimedia environments. The implication of this difference for understanding technology use for learning is presented and the need for an empirical study to address this is argued for. A pilot was undertaken to further define the methodological requirements of conducting a study into the impact of system performance on QoE. The findings of the pilot study describe issues and implications for designing a research methodology which can begin the process of mapping the QoE to QoS relationship for online learning

Wireless data management system for environmental monitoring in livestock buildings

The impact of air quality on the health, welfare and productivity of livestock needs to be considered, especially when livestock are kept in enclosed buildings. The monitoring of such environmental factors allows for the development of appropriate strategies to reduce detrimental effects of sub-optimal air quality on the respiratory health of both livestock and farmers. In 2009, an environmental monitoring system was designed, developed and tested that allowed for the monitoring of a number of airborne pollutants. One limitation of the system was the manual collection of logged data from each unit. This paper identifies limitations of the current environmental monitoring system and suggests a range of networking technologies that can be used to increase usability. Consideration is taken for the networking of environmental monitoring units, as well as the collection of recorded data. Furthermore, the design and development of a software system that is used to collate and store recorded environmental data from multiple farms is explored. In order to design such a system, simplified software engineering processes and methodologies have been utilised. The main steps taken in order to complete the project were requirements elicitation with clients, requirements analysis, system design, implementation and finally testing. The outcome of the project provided a potential prototype for improving the environmental monitoring system and analysis informing the benefit of the implementation

Time scheduling in a peer-to-peer remote access laboratory for STEM education

Remote Access Laboratories (RAL) are online environments that allow users to access instruments through the Internet. Such environments enable users to control equipment and collect data without being present in the laboratory. This also means that users work in a disjoint manner and cannot co-ordinate equipment usage directly with each other, as they would do in regular on-site laboratories. Remote laboratory management systems deal with scheduling users, as most instruments cannot process multiple users' requests at the same time. Two scheduling strategies are predominantly used in RALs: time slotting and the queuing. This is straightforward in centralised, service-oriented environments, in particular, when instruments are available continuously throughout the day. In this paper, time scheduling in the context of a Distributed Peer-to-peer Remote laboratory featuring quest-based learning, is discussed. Here interaction with the entire system is organised around a set of learning activities or quests. This includes the experiments designed by users and the sharing of experiments by users. The providers of the experiments have the flexibility to put their systems online as per their capabilities. As such, the experiments availability become scarcer and must be judiciously assigned to the users who need them most

Introducing RALfie – remote access laboratories for fun, innovation and education

Remote Access laboratories are online platform for performing experiments from remote locations. Usually these systems follow a centralised client-server paradigm. This demo will present RALfie - Remote Access Laboratories for Fun, Innovation and Education that is a peer-to-peer remote access laboratory architecture where participants are both users of experiments as well as makers. The system is built upon a VPN service that allows direct access between learner and makers’ experiential rigs. A graphical programming language SNAP is the basis of programming and interfacing with the experimental rig. Apart from experiment and interfaces, quest-based learning strategy is used that presents the experiments as a set of hierarchical groups of activities or quests. This distributed design of RAL allows more hands-on experience to build any experimental setup and provides opt unities to collaborate with fellow students