International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 120 – No.16, June 2015
14
Virtual Laboratory Implementation to Support High
School Learning
Arief Hidayat
Information System Department
STIMIK Pro Visi
Semarang
Victor Gayuh Utomo
Computer Science Department
STIMIK Pro Visi
Semarang
ABSTRACT
Learning activities are not limited to the delivery of theory
content and evaluation, but they also include some experiment
activity in laboratory. Some subjects require experiments
activity in the laboratory, i.e. Biology, Mathematics,
Chemistry and Physics. Those subjects demand the
educational institution, high school in this occasion, to
provide facilities and infrastructure in the form of laboratory
equipment in order to support experiment activities. However,
the experiment activity currently conducted in laboratory not
yet suffice the need of student to learn independently. An
additional experiment activity is needed, in such way that
takes time other than learning hour and can be done
independently. Laboratory access must not limited to
attending school laboratory physically, in a sense that non-
physical laboratory such as virtual laboratory may also be
included. This research result an implementation of virtual
laboratory in the form of computer application that is
available anybody for experiments with affordable cost at any
given time and place as long as connected to main server
provider.
Keywords
Virtual laboratory, high school, learning
1. INTRODUCTION
Laboratory experiment and other form of experiment in
learning are expected to assist student to acquire the technical
ability. The experiments should be an important source of
learning in order to better understanding both in concepts and
theories. Experiments may also improve students’ creative
thinking.
According to Peraturan Pemerintah (Government Regulation)
No. 19 of 2005 on Standar Nasional Pendidikan (National
Education Standard) article 19 paragraph 1, suitable learning
process is required to improve the ability of creative thinking.
The regulation explains that learning process in educational
institution organized in such manners as interactive, inspiring,
fun, challenging, give student motivation to take active role
and provide enough space for innovation, creativity and
independence related to students’ talent, interest, and physical
and psychological development.
The main disadvantage in conventional learning is limited
learning time availability. Classroom distribution and
provision and also teacher schedule heavily impact learning
activities. Involvement of many stakeholders, especially
teachers and students, makes learning activities need a shared
commitment in terms of time and place. Such condition put
constraint which limit the flexibility of time avilability for
learning activities.[1]
The reality of learning activities shows the fact that many
school don’t have the required instruments / equipment to
conduct laboratory experiment. It is a result of the high
laboratory operational cost. Only a few students has the
opportunity to develop thinking ability because of the lack of
lab experiments. Many students just received an explanation
from the teacher alone without performing experiments.
Another cause that can inhibit the creative potential in the
formal educational environment is the learning process which
is mostly teacher-centered. Teacher explains the subject with
a lecture then give exercises and assignments while the
students become information recipient. As a result, the
students merely copying what the teacher says and asks,
without further explanation and understanding. The students
assume that it is enough to work the study as exampled. It
causes the students' lack of interest and lack of curiosity
which not good for improvement of creative thinking skills
[2].
The ability of creative thinking is a person's ability to create
something new, in the form of idea or work, that relatively
different from what has gone before. In this context,
something new doesn’t necessarily a brand new product /
creation, even though the end result may look totally new, it
may be a result of combining two or more concepts that may
already exist in the past [3].
Interest, according Slameto [4], means a better sense of joy
and a sense of attachment to a thing or activity, without being
told. In other words, interest is a sense of a more happy in
oneself in giving greater attention to a particular object.
In general, many students consider that science subjects
(Biology, Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics) a daunting
and tedious, resulting many students have no interest in
understanding and mastering basic concepts in science
subjects. To overcome the difficulties, the teachers are
expected to be able to present the science subjects more
interesting and creative. Hopefully, the students may rid the
wrong prejudice that science subjects is difficult for them. To
present science subjects more attractive, teachers must have
the ability to develop learning methodology or model and
utilize learning media in such way that raise students’ interest
and achieve learning objectives well.
Currently, many high schools hold learning activities both
theory and practical conventionally. Distance learning as a
form to support independent learning activities not yet
effective moreover with the lack independent experiment in
laboratory. Students only fixated on learning activities in the
classroom and experimental activities in laboratories. The
current curriculum determine that students required to meet
some competencies as subject’s minimum completion. The
competency reached not only from conventional class but also
International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 120 – No.16, June 2015
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from assignments, discussion, independent experiment and
some activities that take place outside of school. Virtual
laboratory is considered important by the school so students
may perform experiment activity such as experiment in
physical laboratory. There are two important components in
virtual laboratories, i.e. simulation and animation. Simulation
aims to describe the real environment in a system. Through
simulation the students can experiment by replacing
parameter’s value so experiment produce different behavior.
The different behaviors are then displayed through animation.
These experimental results may also automatically recorded
by the system and taken as report.
The goals of this study are; first, design and develop a virtual
laboratory application to help creating and managing
independent and interactive experiment activity process;
second, accommodates student’s experiment independency,
which is limited by the number of learning hours, the number
of meeting, and inadequate equipment for experiment; third,
create an innovative learning system in order to improve the
quality of students as a reflection of learning independence.
2. VIRTUAL LABORATORY
Laboratory usually defined as: 1). place equipped for
experimental study in science or for testing and analysis; 2).
place that provides an opportunity for experiment,
observation, or practice in the field of study, or 3). academic
periods set aside for laboratory work.
A virtual laboratory is defined as an interactive environment
to create and conduct simulation experiments: a playground
for experimentation. It consists of domain dependent
simulation program, experimental units called objects that
include data files, a tool that operates on objects, and
reference books [5].
Virtual laboratory is a system that can be used to support a
system that runs a conventional laboratory. These laboratory
are usually called the Virtual Laboratory or V-Lab. Hopefully,
this virtual laboratory may provide an opportunity to students,
especially to do experiment with or without access to the
Internet so that students do not need to be present to
participate in an experiment at the laboratory. This kind of
learning will be effective because students can learn by
themselves actively without an instructor or assistant, unlike
currently running system. Web based display format
considered enough to help students to follow the experiment
independently [6].
2.1 Virtual Laboratory to Support
Learning Process
Virtual environment, called virtual laboratory, varies from
static web pages with video and text to dynamic pages with
sophisticated environments, such as collaborative authoring
[7], video on demand, virtual meetings, and many other
features. This virtual laboratory could also allow remote
access to measurement instruments, video cameras,
microphones, electrical and mechanical circuits, chemical
reactions, biological experiments, and so on.
The diversity of models and structures for virtual lab is very
wide and varies according to the nature of the projects
examined, objectives, and the technology involved.
Motivation for implementing virtual labs including, but not
limited to [7]:
1. Limitations on resources and laboratory space in the real
world. This type of limitation can cause delays in
students’ learning activities, who may face a situation
where they have to compete or to wait given the
availability of resources. Other than the fact that an
experiment may be interrupted before the conclusion
achieved because the required resource are divided.
2. The possibility of sharing equipment is usually
expensive.
3. Stimulus for collaborative research or work in groups
independent of their physical distance.
4. The existence of the learning environment outside
school, which allows students to participate or develop
their own project together with other students in their
spare time.
5. The possibility of developing a variety of experiments in
different locations.
6. Remote supervision and intervention in dangerous
experiments, thus helping to prevent accidents.
7. Access and control of remote equipment.
2.2 Virtual Laboratory Type
Virtual laboratories can be divided into two main types,
namely simulator based laboratory and equipment based on
real hardware laboratory in either 2-D or 3-D. The first type is
based on a set of software model that is the object or system
in a certain level of abstraction. The only problem here is with
the accuracy of the simulator behavior. Very often the real
object is different from their abstract models. This is because
the abstract model is developed to be simple and to help
students to understand the basics. Most of them can not
represent all of the features of the object simulation. The
second type of virtual labs that cover most of the quality of
the first kind and allow this approach to the classics. In every
classroom there are shelves with equipment that cannot be
used for distance learning and inaccessible to students all the
time. So combine the classic with the modern learning
allowing remote access to real equipment may improve the
flexibility of teaching process and real laboratory usage.
Using software and network technology, equipment connected
to access [8].
3. APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT
METHOD
Computer-Based System Engineering Method is used in the
development of virtual laboratory application. The method is
based on the principal of software engineering through the
development steps according to System Development Life
Cycle (SDLC). SDLC consists of several steps, i.e. analysis,
design, implementation, testing and evaluation. Those steps
may be done in overlap and cyclical way.
Generally, the virtual laboratory architecture is built upon
three main components [9]:
1. End-user application environment. It provides
experiments based on specific scientific domain. End-
user application run the experiment under this
components. As far as the end-user concerns, it is the
virtual laboratory.
2. Middleware. Middleware works between the higher level
client side application and the lower level distributed
computing facilities. The middleware, binds with the
front-end interface, works to enable the virtual laboratory
users to define and execute their experiments.
3. Distributed computing environment. Distributed
computing environment provides computing and
communication resources at the virtual laboratory in a
more efficient utilization.
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3.1 Requirement Analysis
Requirement analysis is held to obtain input, for designing
purpose, in the form of a data flow diagram of the currently
developed application. The diagram contains systems
engineering requirements which include software, hardware,
servers and networks that are required in the design and
implementation of the virtual laboratory applications.
3.2 The Design of Virtual Laboratory
Applications
The design phase use the output of requirements analysis.
This phase will result in the virtual laboratory application
specification and design. The application has 3 types of users,
student, teacher, and system administrators. Learning scenario
in general used on application is as follow:
1. Student registers to the application. Successful
registration will give the student a set of username and
password.
2. Student may log into the application using the given
username and password. User will receive a session ID If
the login attempt is successful. Session ID acts as unique
identity of each learning session. The session ID is used
every time the student enters the application and remains
active until the student decide to log out.
3. After logged in, the student will meet experiments list
offered by the application. Student chooses one from the
offered experiments. Students may add an experiment to
their followed experiment list by the folowing condition;
their request for the experiment is approved or the
experiment is under free to follow category (means that
approval of the application or pre-test is not required).
4. Student may choose one of the experiment from the
followed experiment list. Under the chosen experiment,
student may download experiment material from the
server, store it in their computer and start to experiment.
5. Student may follow the final examination to test the level
of understanding. If the student passed the exam, passing
grade/assessment data will be included into student
portfolio.
6. During the experiment, student may discuss with fellow
student who followed the same experiment or with the
teacher by sending text questions or comments to the
forum.
7. Student who completed a learning session may log out
from the application. The process will reset the registered
session ID in the application.
Based on the processes from the previous section, the
application requires a connection to the server only on some
occasion, i.e. log in, view experiment list and server content,
download content, conducting experiment, send answer and
send message.
3.3 Design Implementation
Virtual laboratory applications is built using PHP and Action
Script as programming script that runs on Apache web server.
Procedures that determined from the design phase are coded
and documented. MySQL database is used to store processed
data.
4. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
4.1 Design Implementation
Since virtual laboratory is a web-based application, the system
specification include server-side specification and client-side
specification.
1. Server-Side Specification
The implementation of virtual laboratory is hosted on third
party provider and can be accessed via http://vlsma.net. Table
1 shows complete information about the server side
specification.
Table 1. Virtual laboratory Server Specification
No.
Specifications
Description
1
Domain
http://vlsma.net
2
Web Hosting
http://idwebhost.com
3
The Storage Capacity
2 GB
4
Bandwith
50 GB per month
5
Platform’s Operating
System
CentOS Server
6
Web Server
Apache
7
Database
MYSQL
2. Client-Side Specification
Client may access the virtual laboratory application use any
web browser which supports Flash Player with suggested
minimum screen resolution 1024x768. In this research, the
application is accessed via Google Chrome web browser.
4.2 Application Implementation Result
The required files in virtual laboratory application are hosted
to the web hosting provider. The pages of virtual laboratory
application consists of three main view categories, student
view, teacher view and administrator view.
1. Student View Pages
Student view pages shows pages for user of virtual laboratory
application that acts as student. The student may access the
virtual laboratory via web browser.
First page of virtual laboratory application showed to the
student is login page. Student may log in to the application by
supplying the required username and password. Unregistered
user may apply to the administrator for registration. Login
page are shown in figure 1.
Fig 1: Login page
Successfully logged in, student headed to the student main
page. The main page shows courses followed by the student.
Student may choose the available option to access other pages
such as contents, news, discussions, assignments, exams and
exam results. Using logout button, students may exit the
virtual laboratory application. Student main page and menu
choice shown in Figure 2.
International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 120 – No.16, June 2015
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Fig 2: Student Main Page
Experiment page is the page that contains the learning content
if the form of flash interactive multimedia, so that students
can do the simulation, as shown in Figure 3.
Fig 3: Experiment Page
2. Teacher View Pages
Teacher view pages are pages for teacher to manage courses,
such as enroll students, upload content, make
news/announcements, manage discussion, make assignment,
make exam and see students’ exam result. Teachers may
access the virtual laboratory via web browser after logged in.
Successfully logged in, teacher headed to the teacher main
page. The main page shows courses managed by the teacher
with the following options, content, news, discussions,
assignments, exams and exam results. Using logout button,
teachers may exit the virtual laboratory application. Teacher
main page and menu choice shown in Figure 4.
Fig 4: Teacher Main Page
Teacher use experiment upload page to upload content in the
form of interactive multimedia for every chapter/topic in the
course. The students may watch and download them.
Experiment upload page is shown in Figure 5.
Fig 5: Experiment Upload Page
3. Administrator View Pages
Administrator view pages are pages for administrator to
manage users and courses. Administrator access virtual
laboratory application via web browser in the computer after
logged in.
Successfully logged in, administrator headed to the
administrator main page. In the page, there are two options i.e.
user management and course management. Using logout
button, administrators may exit the virtual laboratory
application. Teacher main page and menu choice shown in
Figure 6.
Fig 6: Administrator Main Page
Administrator use “add user” page to add user for the virtual
laboratory application as well as the user’s authority. There
are three types of authority, i.e. administrator, teacher or
student. Add user page is shown in Figure 7.
Fig 7: Add User Page
Administrator use “add course” page to add course that will
be delivered in the virtual laboratory application.
Administrator also need to supply the teacher responsible for
the course. as well as the user’s authority. Add course page is
shown in Figure 8.
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Volume 120 – No.16, June 2015
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Fig 8: Add Course Page
4.3 Application Testing
This virtual laboratory application is tested under black box
method. Black box test is application program test based on
application program functionality. The purpose of the black
box method is to find a malfunction in the application.
Alpha-test trial is held to determine the virtual laboratory
application ability to run on mobile devices such as cellphone,
PDA or smart phone. Test is held against every function / sub-
module of the application program. Feedback obtained by
creating a trial class of 40 students which are told to try the
virtual laboratory application. Results obtained from the
feedback is almost 90% say of the students say the virtual
laboratory applications is acceptable and easy to use. Table 2
shows summary of virtual laboratory’s ease of use.
Table 2. Summary of virtual laboratory’s ease of use
Questions
Agree
Disagree
I can use this application without
any guidance or minimal
guidance
38
2
I can understand objective of the
application
40
0
The instructions and prompts are
helpful
38
2
The application always did what I
was expected
37
3
I can easily view my experiments
37
3
The application has a very
attractive presentation
37
3
This application can help me to
do experiments on my own
36
4
This application help me to
recognize my strength and
weakness of the subject
36
4
I can take experiments at any time
and place I like
36
4
Working with this application is
satisfying
37
3
5. CONCLUSION
Based on the results and discussion, some conclusion
regarding the virtual laboratory application are made. The
conclusions are 1). virtual laboratory applications can be used
to manage experiment virtually, 2). virtual laboratory
applications can be used to upload, read, make an experiment
virtually and download experiment content, 3). teacher may
use the application to make online announcement to the
students, 4). students may upload their assignment task for the
teacher using the application, and 5).teacher may use the
application to evaluate the students in the form of quiz or
exam. Future work of this research are additional feature that
needed by user such as guest book, record pages accessed by
users and interaction with teacher in the form chating.
Another enhancement may include improving virtual
appearance in virtual laboratory to give better experience,
allowing data compression which reduce the size of data
accessed by user without sacrifice any content.
6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Researchers would like to thank to the Ministry of Education
and Culture - General Director of Higher Education (DIKTI)
which provide fund for this research.
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