As technology is increasingly being seen as a facilitator to learning, open remote laboratories are increasingly available and in widespread use around the world. They provide some advantages over traditional hands-on labs or simulations. This paper presents the results of integrating the open remote laboratory VISIR into several courses, in various contexts and using various methodologies. These integrations, all related to higher education engineering, were designed by teachers with different perspectives to achieve a range of learning outcomes. The degree to which these VISIR-related outcomes were accomplished is discussed. The results reflect the levels of student engagement and learning and of teacher involvement. From the analysis, a connection between these two aspects was traced, although only related to the user profiles. VISIR is shown to be always of benefit for more motivated students, but this benefit can be maximized under particular conditions and characteristics.

Remote Laboratories have become part of current teaching and learning, particularly in engineering. Their potential to aid students beyond their hands-on lab classes has been a matter of discussion in literature. Teachers and researchers are aware that the thorough analysis of both strengths and shortcomings of remote labs in didactical implementations may not only lead to the improvement of these resources but also of the pedagogical implications in engineering classes. The present study was carried out in a Higher Education Institution in Brazil in two different courses during three consecutive semesters where a remote lab (VISIR) addressing electric and electronic topics was implemented, yielding 471 students' academic results and opinions. These students' results (while using VISIR) cross-analysed with the course characteristics, reveal some factors teachers may tackle to foster student learning and motivation. The conclusions point to the need for VISIR interface modernization and showed it is more useful in basic courses than in more advanced ones, when dealing with classic lab experiments. Results also show that teachers' involvement plus their ability to brief students on VISIR's usefulness have a significant influence not only on students' performance but also on their perception of learning and satisfaction with the tool. In the analysed cases, the students with more learning needs seemed to be the ones who could benefit more from VISIR.

Abstract-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.

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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 alternatives accessible anytime, anywhere. These two alternatives are known as virtual and remote labs, and are sometimes indistinguishably referred as online labs. Similarly to other instructional technologies, virtual and remote labs require some effort from teachers in integrating them into curricula, taking into consideration several 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 number of teachers and students involved in engineering education. It presents an example 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

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