Online remote laboratories are a particularly promising tool for effective STEM education. They offer online universal access to different hardware devices in which students can experiment and can test and improve their knowledge. However, most of them have two significant limitations. First, given that most of them are developed as, or evolve from single-user proofs of concept, they have no scalability provisions other than full laboratory replication. And second, when this is done, cost efficiency is often neglected. This paper presents the requirements for the creation of a novel remote laboratory architecture focused on, but not limited to, embedded systems experimentation. An architecture, based on Redis (an open source, in-memory data structure store, which is often used as database, cache or message broker), a modular design, and hardware-sharing techniques, is proposed in order to achieve the combined requirements of high scalability and cost efficiency. This mixed hardware-software architecture serves as a basis for the development of remote laboratories, especially those focused on microcontroller-based systems experimentation and embedded devices experimentation. From a user perspective the architecture is web-based, and has provisions to be easily adaptable to different Learning Management Systems and different hardware embedded devices. A new microcontroller-oriented remote laboratory based on the architecture has been developed, with the aim of providing valid evaluation data, and has been used in a real environment. The architecture and the resulting remote laboratory have been compared with other state of the art remote laboratories and their architectures. Results suggest that the proposed architecture does indeed meet the main requirements, which are scalability through replicability and cost efficiency. Furthermore, similarly to previous architectures, it promotes usability, universal access, modularity and reliability.

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Improving the Scalability and Replicability of Embedded Systems Remote Laboratories Through a Cost-Effective Architecture

FPGAs are a powerful technology for teaching hardware design, through which students can learn how to design hardware using common hardware description languages such as VHDL or Verilog. However, the use of FPGAs in the classroom has several different problems, such as availability or associated costs of acquiring and maintaining the FPGAs. Also, relying on FPGA boards in the classroom is typically problematic because students cannot use the boards for doing projects after classes or during weekends. To solve this problem, remote laboratories can help allow more flexibility to students. A remote laboratory is a hardware and software system that allows students to access a real FPGA located somewhere else on the Internet. In this article, a cross-national remote laboratory is presented. This remote laboratory has multiple copies (17 devices at the time of this writing) deployed both in UPNA (Spain) and UNIFESP (Brazil), and using LabsLand (Spain) for technology and management of the laboratory. Students of both institutions access these laboratories transparently. This provides automatic fault tolerance and increases the potential number of concurrent students using the laboratories by sharing the boards among both institutions.

FPGA Remote Laboratory: Experience in UPNA and UNIFESP

Abstract Remote learning has advanced from the theoretical to the practical sciences with the advent of virtual labs. Although virtual labs allow students to conduct their experiments remotely, it is a challenge to evaluate student progress and collaboration using learning analytics. So far, a study that systematically synthesizes the status of research on virtual laboratories and learning analytics does not exist, which is a gap our study aimed to fill. This study aimed to synthesize the empirical research on learning analytics in virtual labs by conducting a systematic review. We reviewed 21 articles that were published between 2015 and 2021. The results of the study showed that 48% of studies were conducted in higher education, with the main focus on the medical field. There is a wide range of virtual lab platforms, and most of the learning analytics used in the reviewed articles were derived from student log files for students’ actions. Learning analytics was utilized to measure the performance, activities, perception, and behavior of students in virtual labs. The studies cover a wide variety of research domains, platforms, and analytical approaches. Therefore, the landscape of platforms and applications is fragmented, small-scale, and exploratory, and has thus far not tapped into the potential of learning analytics to support learning and teaching. Therefore, educators may need to find common standards, protocols, or platforms to build on each others’ findings and advance our knowledge. 

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Learning analytics in virtual laboratories: a systematic literature review of empirical research

During the last ten years, the University of Deusto is using VISIR remote lab for analog electronics in the Faculty of Engineering. Present paper shows how we are using the VISIR with students, and its results. It is a catalog of experiments to invite other universities to join the VISIR consortium. Ongoing and future research in VISIR are also presented.

Using VISIR Remote Lab in the Classroom: Case of Study of the University of Deusto 2009–2019

Engineering involves many areas of Science, and implies the explanation of many different theoretical concepts. Lab sessions are designed to reinforce those concepts, but generally they are not enough to cover all of them. Remote and virtual labs help this proposal. With them, students can put in practice and reinforce academic concepts at home. Specifically, Remote labs grant them access to lab equipment and configurations, impossible in other situations that request lecturer. In this work, a flexible configuration is presented, based on 2019 most popular programming languages (Python (for the back-end) and JavaScript (for the front-end)), for Remote Lab Sessions, with a minimum network privileges, scalable and reconfigurable. It is based on a Reception-Server, which hosts the User-database and the Shift Management, for use of Instrument-Servers, and controls the User data flow. These Instrument-Servers, host the instruments interfaces, the experience, and manage the connection with the instruments and different hardware involved. Users connect to Reception-Server, which uses a public IP address, and forward the Users to Instrument-Servers, on schedule reserved. This avoids the need for Instrument-Servers external access for, and protects the network, acting as firewall (only communications among Reception-Server and Instrument-Servers are allowed). The experiences are evaluated through a three-fold system, logging the User session, with a survey of interaction experience, and with a knowledge questionnaire related to the experience. An example of use is provided, in which the user experiences control of a DC power supply, throw GPIB using standard commands for programmable instruments (SCPI).

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Reconfigurable web-interface remote lab for instrumentation and electronic learning

Remote laboratories are hardware and software tools that enable students to access real equipment through the Internet. Remote Laboratory Management Systems (RLMS) are software tools developed for creating remote laboratories in an easier way, providing some of the transversal features common in most remote labs (such as authentication, authorization, scheduling platforms or administration tools), and some protocols or APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for creating the laboratories. WebLab-Deusto is a popular open source RLMS used in different universities to create or administer their remote laboratories; and it offers two approaches for developing remote laboratories: managed (where all the communications go through WebLab-Deusto) and unmanaged (where the communications are managed by the remote lab developer). While originally the managed approach had a number of advantages over the unmanaged, nowadays, with web development technologies fastly changing and increasing productivity, it became important to provide a proper support for the unmanaged by creating a completely new framework called weblablib, developed by LabsLand and also Open Source. This article describes this framework, and the different trade-offs that remote lab developers have to deal with when implementing a remote laboratory.

WebLabLib: New Approach for Creating Remote Laboratories

The VISIR dashboard (VISIR-DB) is a learning analytics tool connected with the VISIR remote lab. In VISIR, every action performed by a student from the interface over the remote laboratory and back is logged and recorded. VISIR-DB helps visualizing, in a fast and deep way, the recorded logs from this communication. Using this tool, a teacher can analyze and understand better how the students are using the remote lab during their learning process on analog electronics. With this information, the VISIR platform can be improved and the use of remote labs can be better understood.

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Dashboard for the VISIR remote lab

The paper presents a new remote laboratory for the development of programmable logic experiments that allows to perform all the workflow included in the development of digital systems through programmable devices from an Internet browser.The architecture of the laboratory facilitates the deployment of multiple instances of experimentation that make possible the use of the laboratory in courses with numerous students.

Integral Remote laboratory for Programmable Logic

A remote laboratory is a hardware and software solution that enables students to interact with real equipment located somewhere else on the internet. This way, students interact with a real laboratory as if they were on a hands-on-lab session. Once the equipment is remote, it is also possible to share it among institutions, so students from one school or university can access a lab in another university. While there is an interest by many universities of sharing their laboratories, and there are several experiences doing so, the impact has been typically limited. One of the reasons for the limited impact is the lack of robustness in most solutions due to technical issues, which leads to a lack of trust and interest by the potential consumers. LabsLand is a spin-off of the WebLab-Deusto research group which sells access to laboratories of universities to other schools and universities. This contribution analyzes through use cases what are the technical and organizational pitfalls that were found in the process of taking real laboratories and making them available commercially and what are the solutions used to tackle the issues arisen.

Addressing technical and organizational pitfalls of using remote laboratories in a commercial environment

The use of new learning tools based on ubiquitous learning has become a pedagogical mediation tool in which the student can learn from anywhere, however, the incorporation of infrastructure based on remote administration systems has made it more and more possible that this type of learning permits to be a real alternative of pedagogical mediation and at the same time generate social inclusion, making it possible to cover students who are located in distant areas and who have difficulties in accessing laboratory practices. Being the access to resources the predominant factor that prevails in any high quality accreditation process in institutions. The institutions in favor of improving the institutional demands make enormous efforts so that these requirements are met; however, the infrastructure in the institutions becomes a great problem to solve, since there are not enough laboratories and each one of them does not have the supplies to perform laboratory practices and this is added to the high costs they incurred, in addition to the maintenance of them. The development of this type of projects allows students to involve the use of new technologies in the emerging processes of engineering in their social environment as well as real experiments, in sufficient quantity and quality that enhance the ability to learn and master the science.

Aitor Villar

Papers

WebLabLib: New Approach for Creating Remote Laboratories

Dashboard for the VISIR remote lab

Integral Remote laboratory for Programmable Logic

Addressing technical and organizational pitfalls of using remote laboratories in a commercial environment

Use of Remote Laboratories in Engineering as an Alternative to Pedagogical Mediation and Social Inclusion in Distance Education