Session W1C
Workshop - Remote Laboratories: Approaches for the Future Euan Lindsay 1, Phil Long 2 and PK Imbrie 3 Abstract – Laboratory classes are an integral part of engineering education, but they are resource intensive impose significant logistical constraints upon the curriculum. One option to reduce these burdens is the use of remote laboratory classes – where students interact with the hardware at a distance, rather than in the traditional laboratory environment. Remote laboratories are an increasingly popular innovation in engineering education, but their development has for the large part been an ad hoc process - they are developed in isolation to address the needs of a particular laboratory class; and they are often regarded as a “second-best” substitute for the real thing. This workshop is aimed at fostering a more strategic approach to the future development of remote laboratory classes, from both pedagogical and logistical viewpoints. Throughout this workshop it our intent to access existing remote laboratories across multiple engineering disciplines to illustrate important characteristics. Index Terms – Laboratory Education, Pedagogy, Remote Laboratories INTRODUCTION Laboratory classes are widely accepted as a crucial part of an undergraduate engineering degree. Good pedagogical reasons, such as illustrating and validating analytical concepts, introducing students to professional practice and to the uncertainties involved in non-ideal situations, developing skills with instrumentation, and developing social and teamwork skills in a technical environment [1-3], illustrate the need for their inclusions in undergraduate curricula. The traditional, proximal, model of the laboratory class is coming under increasing pressure because of the changing demands of engineering courses. Scheduling increasingly large numbers of small groups of students, each of which requires an hour (or more) of continuous and adequately supervised access to an expensive piece of laboratory equipment, is a difficult and expensive task. An increasingly prevalent solution to this dilemma is the use of alternative access modes – either simulation (or virtual) laboratories or remote access to real laboratory hardware. Web-based remote labs have been offered by universities in undergraduate engineering courses since 1996 [4], with the number and sophistication of these efforts growing each year [5-7].
THE ISSUES The initial motivations for remote laboratories were logistical; however more recently the educational impact is being more seriously considered. Coarse-grained analysis of overall scores found no differences between the remote and proximal modes of access to a jet thrust laboratory [8]. A finer grained analysis of an accelerometer calibration laboratory has shown that whilst overall marks may be similar, there are significant differences between modes for some learning outcomes [9], and also differences in the way in which students perceive their laboratory experience [10]. As the field has developed, it has moved on from a simple challenge to technical feasibility – there are now strategic issues on a pedagogical and logistical basis that must be addressed. Pedagogy Remote laboratories offer an alternative learning environment to traditional laboratories. The suitability of remote access for different learning outcomes will be discussed at this workshop, with an aim to determine guidelines as to when remote laboratories are pedagogically appropriate and when they are not. Infrastructure The first examples of remotely accessible laboratories were logistically very simple – a single piece of apparatus made remotely available to a single cohort of students. Software for connecting remote desktops to experimental equipment has become widely available. This paradigm has supported the early stages of research on learning outcomes. However, scalability issues (i.e., having large numbers of students access their own dedicated pieces of equipment) make this an unsuitable and unsustainable model for wide deployment in the future. It simply doesn’t scale. Networks of remote laboratory facilities have already been developed, which allow for universities to share their laboratory hardware. This offers potentially significant savings in laboratory infrastructure, but it raises a number of challenges in the process. What are the core remote lab services that are required? Do they vary by type of experiment?
1
Euan Lindsay, Dept Mechanical Engineering, Curtin University of Technology,
[email protected] Phil Long, Office of Educational Innovation and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
[email protected] 3 PK Imbrie, Dept. of Engineering Education, Purdue University,
[email protected] 2
1-4244-1084-3/07/$25.00 ©2007 IEEE October 10 – 13, 2007, Milwaukee, WI 37th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference W1C-1
Session W1C Managing student access across institutions becomes a significant authentication challenge, and management of demand upon the hardware during peak times can become a problem. There are also economic and organizational considerations with regards to the funding of such shared facilities, and to who actually “owns” the equipment being used? What factors might influence fiscal models necessary to sustain shared access to remote laboratory instrumentation? THE PROCESS The facilitators for this workshop are all strong believers in active/cooperative learning. As such, the workshop will be delivered in an active/collaborative format, with sub-groups of delegates working together to address specific aspects of pedagogy and infrastructure associated with the potential benefits and challenges of using remote laboratories. The session will also feature opportunities for the group as a whole to share the ideas that are developed, as well as to build the interpersonal networks necessary to underpin the sharing of remote laboratory equipment between institutions.
THE DELIVERABLES At the conclusion of the workshop, the following outcomes will have been achieved: • A list of experiments that have been successfully converted to a remote access mode • A discussion of which contexts are suitable for remote laboratory classes, and also those for which remote access is in fact superior to the traditional access mode. • A list of the technical hurdles in robustly placing a single experiment online • A list of the logistical hurdles in sharing laboratory experiences between institutions • A reflection upon the differing needs of the various stakeholders in the remote laboratory experience (students, faculty, institutions, funding agencies etc) • A stronger community of practice amongst participants REFERENCES
Pedagogy The workshop will consider the pedagogical issues of laboratory education in general, and how it specifically maps to the remote laboratory context. The suitability of this access mode to the development of particular learning outcomes will be one key topic of discussion. What would be most useful for teaching using remote labs? Are learning activities (aka lab experiments) more useful if they are fully detailed, complete entities or is it more useful to have a granular modules that require adaptation before they can be used in any given context? Infrastructure The workshop will review current frameworks for deployment of remote laboratories in the future. There have been some initiatives that have moved beyond the “standard” model of a single user remote interface to a single piece of equipment. What are the criteria for sustainable development of remote laboratories? What design requirements are critical to make a portal to a family of remote laboratory equipment useful? Software architectures, both commercial and open source, will be discussed critically with the intention of developing selection guidelines to facilitate the future development of this field. Throughout the workshop specific examples of remote laboratory equipment throughout the world will be accessed to enable key points to be illustrated in the discussion.
[1] [2]
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[4] [5] [6] [7]
[8] [9] [10]
Feisel, L. D. and Rosa, A. J., "The Role of the Laboratory in Undergraduate Engineering Education," Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 94, pp. 121-130, 2005. Scanlon, E., Morris, E., Di Paolo, T., and Cooper, M., "Contemporary approaches to learning science: Technologymediated practical work," Studies in Science Education, vol. 38, pp. 73-112, 2002. Antsaklis, P., Basar, T., deCarlo, R., McClamroch, N. H., Spong, M. W., and Yurkovich, S., "Report on the NSF/CSS Workshop on New Directions in Control Engineering Education," IEEE Control Systems, vol. 19, pp. 53-58, 1999. Aktan, B., Bohus, C. A., Crowl, L. A., and Shor, M. H., "Distance Learning Applied to Control Engineering Laboratories," IEEE Transactions on Education, vol. 39, pp. 320-326, 1996. Trevelyan, J., "Experience with Remote Laboratories in Engineering Education," presented at 14th Ann Conf Aust. Assoc. Eng. Educ, Melbourne, Australia, 2003. Ma, J. and Nickerson, J. V., "Hands-On, Simulated, and Remote Laboratories: A Comparative Literature Review," ACM Computing Surveys, vol. 38, 2006. Imbrie, P. K. and Raghavan, S., "Work In Progress - A Remote eLaboratory for Student Investigation, Manipulation and Learning," presented at 35th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Indianapolis, IN, 2005. Ogot, M., Elliot, G., and Glumac, N., "An Assessment of InPerson and Remotely Operated Laboratories," Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 92, pp. 57-64, 2003. Lindsay, E. D. and Good, M. C., "Effects of Laboratory Access Modes Upon Learning Outcomes," IEEE Transactions on Education, vol. 48, pp. 619-631, 2005. Lindsay, E. D. and Good, M. C., "Effects of Access Modes Upon Students' Perceptions of Learning Objectives and Outcomes," presented at 15th Annual Conference for the Australasian Association for Engineering Education, Toowoomba, Australia,, 2004.
1-4244-1084-3/07/$25.00 ©2007 IEEE October 10 – 13, 2007, Milwaukee, WI 37th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference W1C-2
