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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Conducting laboratory experiments is of vital importance in science and engineering education, independently the level of education. Nowadays, teachers have different ways of allowing students to develop these competences other than hands-on labs, such as simulations and remote labs. This study is focused on the combined use of the three resources, carried out by 51 teachers, in 25 different courses. In total, 39 didactical implementations in the electric and electronics area were performed in several Higher Educational Institutions and Secondary Schools, in Argentina and Brazil. This occurred during 2016 and 2017 academic years, under the scope of the VISIR+ project and VISIR was the implemented remote lab and reached 1569 students. Teachers' perception about student acceptance and performance with VISIR as well as teachers' satisfaction with VISIR, were cross analysed with course characteristics as well as didactical implementation design factors and several interesting correlations stood out: Teachers extra care in designing VISIR tasks accordingly to the learning outcomes/ competences they want their students to develop revealed as a crucial factor; Teacher experience with VISIR plays an important role in students' satisfaction with the tool; Teacher introduction and support to VISIR along the semester is also an important factor.

Abstract-Students experimental competences are of most importance in engineering courses. However in post-Bologna courses, the number of contact hours and the actual extent of hands-on lab work were substantially reduced. Online resources usage (simulators and remote labs) has been growing up in the last decades, as more complex and versatile tools are being developed. Unfortunately, several of these usages reported in literature do not show the didactical backing that support these implementations. This work is a step forward, explaining how a teacher implemented a combination of online resources in order to develop experimental competences.The results show significant correlations between students' usage of these resources and their calculus competences and final achievements.

This work reports a didactical implementation addressing the development of students' competences on DC circuits. Teacher' approach focus on the use of simultaneous teaching/learning/assessment resources and methods in order to improve students' abilities of adapting and dealing with available tools to solve real practical problems. The impact this didactical implementation was measure in terms of students' perception, usage and learning results. The results indicate that students clearly benefit from the use of virtual resources, in developing their skills, including the associated calculus, although the majority of students do not immediately understand it. This design represents a long-term vision, and, with some adjustments, some identified in this work, this course may become more effective in improving students' learning.

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

Abstract-Experimental