International Cooperation for Remote Laboratory Use

Abstract

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

Distance learning in engineering education: Challenges and opportunities during COVID-19 pandemic crisis in Pakistan

“…9 Moreover, international collaboration among universities (offering similar engineering programs) can be established for access to remote laboratory use where a lab facility in a technologically advanced country can be utilized by a student residing in a developing country. 10 The role of universities is two-fold in such scenarios, in the sense that they are required to provide infrastructure, trainings and policy guidelines to all the faculty members about conducting online academic activities during COVID-19 emergency. On the other hand, the universities must also be aiming to maintain uniformity and quality standards thereby bringing the quality of DL academic activities at par with onsite (FTF) mode of education.…”

Different Didactical Approaches Using a Remote Lab: Identification of Impact Factors

“…Also the contextualization of the theoretical concepts can be easily achieved with remote labs, being quite powerful to address the nature of science and technology [10], [11], arising students' interest to learn the target topic. Remote labs potentiate education and collaboration between institutions, allowing sharing resources and didactical experiences [12]. On the other hand, they may also enhance students' interaction, cooperation, teamwork, communication and critical thinking as long as tasks using these resources are designed accordingly.…”

A sustainable approach to laboratory experimentation

“…Moreover, the physical conditions to give the lab facilities and the components to setup the experiment to all these students would be impracticable. If students have access to a real lab whenever they want using a simple connection to the internet, they will have time for other activates, improving therefore their life quality, given them also an academic resource that will facilitate their learning as already proved by many studies [23] [26].…”