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

PILAR: Sharing VISIR Remote Labs Through a Federation

Social demands have promoted an educational approach based on an “anywhere and anytime” premise. Remote laboratories have emerged as the answer to the demands of technical educational areas for adapting themselves to this scenario. The result has not only benefit distance learning students but has provided new learning scenarios both for teachers and students as well as allowing a flexible approach to experimental topics. However, as any other solution for providing practical scenarios (hands-on labs, virtual labs or simulators), remote labs face several constraints inherited from the subsystems of its deployment -hardware (real instruments, equipment and scenario) and software (analog/digital conversions, communications, workbenches, etc.)-. This paper describes the Erasmus+ project Platform Integration of Laboratories based on the Architecture of visiR (PILAR) which deals with several units of the federation installed in different educational institutions and devoted to analog electronics and electrical circuits. Based on the limitations of remote labs, the need for the federation will be justified and its benefits will be described.The authors acknowledge the support of the Escuela de Doctorado de la UNED, the S2013/ICE-2715 - eMadrid project, VISIR+ project Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education 2015 nº 561735-EPP-1-2015-1-PT-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP and PILAR project Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership nº 2016-1-ES01-KA203-025327 (Platform Integration of Laboratories based on the Architecture of visiR). As well as to the Education Innovation Project (PIE) of UNED, “Desarrollos Avanzados Multi-Objetivo de Laboratorios Remotos para Actividades Educativas – DAMO-LRAE”, from the Vicerrectorado de Ordenación Académica y Calidad and the Instituto Universitario de Educación a Distancia (IUED) of the UNED and to the project 2018-IEQ18 from the Escuela Superior de Ingenieros Industriales of UNED.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

PILAR: a Federation of VISIR Remote Laboratory Systems for Educational Open Activities

Social demands have promoted an educational approach based on an “anywhere and anytime” premise. Remote laboratories have emerged as the answer to the demands of technical educational areas for adapting themselves to this scenario. The result has not only benefit distance learning students but has provided new learning scenarios both for teachers and students as well as allowing a flexible approach to experimental topics. However, as any other solution for providing practical scenarios (hands-on labs, virtual labs or simulators), remote labs face several constraints inherited from the subsystems of its deployment hardware (real instruments, equipment and scenario) and software (analog/digital conversions, communications, workbenches, etc.). This paper describes the Erasmus+ project Platform Integration of Laboratories based on the Architecture of visiR (PILAR) which deals with several units of the federation installed in different educational institutions and devoted to analog electronics and electrical circuits. Based on the limitations of remote labs, the need for the federation will be justified and its benefits will be described by taking advantage of its strengths. The challenges that have come up during the different stages and the different approaches to design are also going to be described and analyzedinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

PILAR: Plataforma de federación de laboratorios remotos VISIR de electrónica analógica

Resumen—Los laboratorios remotos son ya una herramienta de enseñanza/aprendizaje en diferentes campos de la ingeniería y de la ciencia. El laboratorio remoto VISIR es un ejemplo paradigmático de esta nueva metodología en el campo de la electrónica analógica ya que el alumno puede montar y medir circuitos reales de un modo satisfactorio. En la actualidad en Europa hay cinco instancias desplegadas y activas de VISIR y en Sudamérica hay 5 más, cada una de ellas ofrece distintos circuitos eléctricos y electrónicos de manera que el usuario debe saber dónde está desplegado el circuito que él quiere montar y desplegar para poder acceder a él, lo que es una clara limitación. La solución al problema pasa por federar dicho grupo de laboratorios remotosinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Federated Electronic Practical Resources using PILAR as VISIR Integrated Tool

Practical training is a pillar in technical education. Traditionally, these benefits have been acquired through hands-on laboratory sessions. However, at present, the educational models trend to rely on distance education tools either totally (e-learning, m-learning, etc.) or partially (b-learning). To provide practical training in those educational scenarios is challenging. Remote laboratories --real laboratories, working on real systems and under real conditions, controlled remotely-- can play a fundamental role. Nevertheless, remote laboratories not only provide advantages, but disadvantages of both environments involved in the process: real laboratories and remote communications. Furthermore, remote laboratories add new limitations due to constructive constraints. VISIR (Virtual Instruments System In Reality) is a remote laboratory on top of the state of the art for wiring and measuring electrical and electronics circuits, but VISIR system has his own particular restrictions like any other remote lab. In this context, PILAR (Platform Integration of Laboratories based on the Architecture of visiR) Erasmus Plus project development aims for a federation of five of the existing VISIR nodes in Europe: Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH), Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED), University of Deusto (UDEUSTO), Carinthia University of Applied Sciences (CUAS), School of Engineering of Polytechnic of Porto (ISEP). This paper describes the benefits that PILAR project will provide to the consortium, and how these physical constraints of the VISIR system can be compensated through the federation, after one year and a half of the project development and having the first draft of the federation and weebsite running.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Una Federación de Laboratorios Remotos VISIR a través del Proyecto PILAR

Este documento describe cómo un nuevo proyecto Erasmus+, PILAR (Plataform Integration of Laboratories base don the Architecture of visiR), está siendo desarrollado y cómo la puesta en marcha del partenariado y del proyecto está reforzando la red VISIR (Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality) y el Grupo de Interés Especial de VISIR bajo el Consorcio de Laboratorios online (GOLC - Global Online Laboratory Consortium) de la Asociación Internacional de Ingeniería Online (IAOE - International Association of Online Engineering. La Universidad Española para la Educación a Distancia (UNED) coordina este proyecto que tiene como objetivo federar los sistemas existentes (o nuevos) con el fin de utilizar los recursos de manera más efectiva y eficiente, haciendo transparente para el usuario final la elección de los recursos compartidos.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Experimenting in PILAR Federation: a Common Path for the Future

The PILAR (Platform Integration of Laboratories based on the Architecture of visiR) Erasmus Plus project started in September 2016 and will last three years. The core of the PILAR project is the VISIR remote laboratory —Virtual Instruments System In Reality—. The project aims for a federation of five of the existing VISIR nodes, sharing experiments, capacity and resources among partners, and to provide access to VISIR remote lab, through PILAR consortium, to students from other educational institutions. PILAR will be the framework from which management tasks will be performed and laboratories/experiments will be shared. PILAR will also foster the Special Interest Group of VISIR under the Global Online Laboratory Consortium (GOLC) of the International Association of Online Engineering (IAOE).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Spreading remote lab usage: A system — A community — A Federation

Experiments have been at the heart of scientific development and education for centuries. From the outburst of Information and Communication Technologies, virtual and remote labs have added to hands-on labs a new conception of practical experience, especially in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics education. This paper aims at describing the features of a remote lab named Virtual Instruments System in Reality, embedded in a community of practice and forming the spearhead of a federation of remote labs. More particularly, it discusses the advantages and disadvantages of remote labs over virtual labs as regards to scalability constraints and development and maintenance costs. Finally, it describes an actual implementation in an international community of practice of engineering schools forming the embryo of a first world wide federation of Virtual Instruments System in Reality nodes, under the framework of a project funded by the Erasmus+ Program.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

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