An examination of innovative online lab technologies

Abstract

As online education continues to grow, new and innovative ways are needed for these educational institutions to interact with distance learners. Online educational institutions need to compete with traditional brick-and-mortar institutions and training centers to offer distance learners an interactive environment. Distance learning institutions traditionally have had a disadvantage in this area. In this paper we will examine online laboratories, and compare online learners surveyed results to two other interactive technologies. This paper seeks to examine the advantages of online laboratories, and how these technologies try to reduce the competitive gap between distance and traditional educational settings.

<p>Networking Labs in the Online Environment: Indicators for Success</p>

“…First, the key types of network labs will be considered. Online institutions use several options to offer experiential learning with network labs (Adams, 2004;Brown & Lahoud, 2005;Lahoud & Tang, 2006), including the following:…”

Designing a flexible, multipurpose remote lab for the IT curriculum

“…The advent of virtual machine software has created a whole new world of possibilities for creating remote labs (Brown and Lahoud, 2005;Leitner and Cane, 2005;Stockman, 2003). What was technically difficult and cost prohibitive just a few years ago is now commonplace.…”

“…While virtual networks reduce reliance on hardware infrastructure, the can be time consuming to manage. Some have found a less time consuming and more manageable solution is to outsource the infrastructure to a third party (Brown and Lahoud, 2005). This allows institutions to focus more time on creating labs and instruction and less on maintaining the network environment.…”

“…Another approach is to build remote lab environments in-house (Brown and Lahoud, 2005). This can be done by the individual institution at a single site or at multiple sites in using a consortium approach (Toderick, Mohammed, and Tabrizi, 2005;Yang, Yue, Liaw, Collins, Venkatraman, Achar, Sadasivam, and Chen, 2004).…”

An angel on my shoulder: Mimicking face-to-face supervision of computer-based experiential learning over a local-area-network

“…The provision of student access to hands-on experimentation for technology-based coursework is equally important whether it is delivered face-to-face or online [1]. With the growth of online education, the need exists for new and innovative ways to achieve the interactive environment that is necessary for quality outcomes [1], particularly the facilitation of laboratory experimentation by distance learners [2].…”