<span lang="EN-US">Experimentation plays an essential role in engineering education, allowing to balance theoretical proofs and emphasis on physical intuition. Laboratories can fulfil several goals at once, but they also involve high costs, mostly due to equipment, space, and human resources for operating and maintaining them. Remote-access labs have been proposed as a feasible alternative: developed since the early 2000s by an ever-increasing research community, they are real or virtual labs accessible at distance through a computer network. Recently, alternative bibliometric taxonomies and classifications of current networked remote-access labs have been proposed. Yet, none of these works proposes a comprehensive structure to collect and organize the information, especially from a technical perspective, aiming at the definition of the state of the art and future outlooks of provided solutions. In the present work, we fill this gap extending previous works by enlarging their set of criteria towards a general multi-layer model for networked remote-access labs. We performed a systematic review of relevant literature to retrieve useful information to design the structure and then validated it by using a mini-Delphi method. </span>
Lab-based education has always played an important role in teaching students. Making remote and virtual labs communicate with one another by creating networks of labs can enhance the traditional way of learning as well as reduce the costs of implementing and using labs. This paper provides a review of the literature on non-traditional labs and lab network initiatives up to 2020. With the term ‘non-traditional labs’, we mean virtual, remote and hybrid labs, whereas with the term ‘lab network’, we indicate a set of two or more cooperating labs typically connected through the internet. In this study, we used a recent and comprehensive framework for data collection, organization and analysis to gather information on 40 non-traditional labs and lab network initiatives. Thanks to this framework, the outcomes of our work highlight interesting trends of lab-based education, which pertain to didactical, organizational and technical aspects.
The interest of the educational community in the laboratory- (lab) based education has grown steadily. As remote labs have started to be a reliable alternative to traditional hands-on labs, security and safety issues are becoming increasingly important, as their interconnected nature raises new and challenging issues. The complexity increases when multiple institutions are involved in a federated lab infrastructure. This paper provides a guideline for assessing safety and security in federated labs following the VDI/VDE 2182 guideline and verifies the concept based on remote labs in three different academic institutions.
Megaprojects are now as important as ever. As a response to the pandemic, the European Union has put forward the Next Generation EU policy, making available a 2021–2027 long-term budget of €1.8 trillion to fund projects with ecological and digital applications in the field of telecommunication, transportation, and energy infrastructures. Similarly, in the United States a $1.9 trillion Covid relief plan is on the way. Also, China has planned to expedite the rollout of 102 infrastructure megaprojects earmarked for the 2021–25 development plan. Despite their importance to policy-makers, megaprojects are often met with criticism and opposition by citizens, and often go off the rails—either with regard to budget or time, or both. This introductory article presents the aim and scope of the themed issue. It positions the problem areas beyond technical issues and connects them to the social and institutional environment within which megaprojects are planned and implemented. Moreover, the article makes the case for conceptualizing megaprojects as wicked policy fields. In doing so, we specify the three defining elements of megaprojects, namely, complexity, uncertainty, and conflict. The article argues that megaproject development cannot be seen as a rational, straightforward process. It is often a non-linear, conflictual process shaped by the collective action of different stakeholder groups (e.g., project managers, policy-makers, and citizens). Driven by divergent interests, sociotechnical imaginaries, as well as behavioral and discursive logics, groups of actors construct and mobilize narratives to influence final decision-making while interacting with the institutional context.
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