A Prediction Model for Remote Lab Courses Designed upon the Principles of Education for Sustainable Development

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about a cease to the physical-presence operation of many laboratory-based university courses. As a response, higher education courses turned into distance learning. Distance education can foster sustainability through resource savings offered by the benefits of technology use. Therefore, there is a necessity to establish a pathway for sustainability practices concerning the increasing distance education enrollment and technological progress. Under the previous concept, this research paper presents a remote lab for the "Data Acquisition Systems” course, delivered during the pandemic as the digital twin of its respective conventional lab. This remote lab was designed on the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) principles to help students develop critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration competencies. This paper aims to develop a concrete framework for identifying factors that critically affect students' performance during remote lab courses. The analysis is based on students' engagement data collected by the NI-ELVIS remote lab measurement system during the spring academic semester of 2020 at the University of West Attica, Greece. Furthermore, the paper develops a competent prediction model for students at risk of failing the lab. The findings indicate that content comprehension and theory-exercise familiarization were the main risk factors in the case of the specific remote lab. In detail, a unit increase in content comprehension led to a 2.7 unit decrease in the probability of the risk occurrence. In parallel, a unit increase in theory familiarization through exercises led to a 3.2 unit decrease in the probability of the risk occurrence. The findings also underlined that risk factors such as critical thinking were associated with ESD competencies. Besides this, the benefits of delivering distance-learning labs according to the proposed methodology include environmental benefits by contributing to resource and energy savings since students who are about to fail can be located early and assisted. © 2023 by the authors.

Remote Lab Experiments in Mechanic: The Compound Pendulum

The world is not going to be the same. COVID-19 was the catalyst for the worlds Largest ever remote work experience, and clear trends show that we are at the beginning of a new world. The goal of the hands-on work is to help students understand theory, teach them the scientific process and manipulative techniques, and generate interest and motivation in science. To achieve these goals, students must first recall the mathematical model of the physical phenomenon to be studied, perform manipulations to measure the physical phenomenon, demonstrate the compatibility between the theoretical and measured results and conclude with an analysis. At the end of the session, students are evaluated on the scientific quality of their work and receive a grade. Our challenge is to make this methodology available on a digital platform to allow learning for all, regardless of time or place © 2023, International journal of online and biomedical engineering.All Rights Reserved.

Remote Energy Lab - Experience and Improvements of European Cooperation in Remote Labs (SHORT)

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, online teaching methods have gained more interest. Most formats of teaching can be easily transferred into an online format from a technical point of view. However, this is more difficult for practical courses in a laboratory. Together with partners from three European universities, we tackled the issue of providing a practical online course for higher education levels in the framework of the EuroTeQ university. In this work, we present our concept of the course and discuss the course goals and further improvements. We tested the remote lab setting in order to offer the course on a yearly basis in future. The remote lab was focused on energy engineering and was open to students from different engineering disciplines and countries. The course was comprised of three blocks, each consisting of one lecture on the broader context of the topic and one experimental laboratory session. The experimental session was streamed via a video broadcasting service. Students were required to either deliver a written report or to write a newspaper article for each of the three blocks. The learning outcome of the course was that students on the one hand learn about the technologies discussed in the course and on the other hand learn about intercultural communication skills. The goal was to show the diversity of technologies and to show the significance of each technology for a specific country. The online experimental sessions proved to deliver a clear explanation of the topic for the students when provided with sufficient course material adapted to online formats. Contrary, keeping a high level of interaction with students during remote experiments was found most challenging. © 2022 SEFI 2022 - 50th Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education, Proceedings. All rights reserved.

The Development of Sustainable Engineering with PjBL during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Sustainable Engineering education must provide cyber-physical and distributed systems competencies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The COVID-19 pandemic caused profound impacts arising from a traditional on-site teaching model rupture and demanded distance learning for engineering students. In this context, we considered the following Research Questions (RQ): How can Project Based Learning (PjBL) be applied in hardware and software courses from the Engineering curriculum to foster practical activities during the COVID-19 pandemic? Is the student performance in the fully remote offering comparable to the face-to-face offering? (RQ1); Which Sustainable Development Goals are related to the Engineering students' project themes? (RQ2). Regarding RQ1, we present how PjBL was applied in first-, third- and fifth-year Computer Engineering Courses to support 31 projects of 81 future engineers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Student grades in a Software Engineering course indicate no relevant differences between student performance in remote and face-to-face offerings. Regarding RQ2, most Computer Engineering students from the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo in 2020 and 2021 decided to create projects related to SDG 3-Good Health and Well-being, SDG 8-Decent Work and Economic Growth and SDG 11-Sustainable Cities and Communities. Most projects were related to health and well-being, which was an expected behavior according to how health issues were brought into highlight during the pandemic.

Remote Laboratory as an Educational Tool in Robotics Experimental Course

A remote lab is a technology that allows participants to efficiently conduct experimental teaching where users can connect to lab equipment from anywhere without being in a specific physical location. The COVID-19 pandemic affects all areas of human activity. As a result, students did not receive face-to-face instruction, and access to the laboratory was limited or practically impos-sible, and access to laboratory facilities has been limited or nearly impossible. Especially in engineering education, students' practical abilities cannot be devel-oped comprehensively. In this paper, this paper built an online remote robotics experiment system using digital twin (DT) technology and IoT technology and adopted ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evalua-tion) teaching method. With these measures, students can design and debug robot programs at home, just like in the laboratory. This study sent questionnaires to 64 students, and 58 were returned. The results show that more than 80% of students believe that the remote labs for industrial robotics courses have improved the efficiency and quality of students' skills training as opposed to virtual simulation and watching videos on the computer.

A Smartphone based Remote-Lab cum Topic-Specific Learning Management System

A smartphone application has been developed to help students perform laboratory experiments remotely and on the go. The students need to use their smartphones or tablets to connect with the teacher's smartphone, which in turn is interfaced with the actual experiment through a data-acquisition setup. The students may interact and seek help from the teacher at every step of the experiment. The teacher may provide the students with all the information and resources from within the application itself. The teacher may also manage the progress of learning of the experimental topic by each individual student. Such an interactive remote learning approach to laboratory experiments and related topics may prove very helpful for both the teachers and the students, especially in these times of the new normal. © 2022 IEEE.

Teaching Digital Electronics during the COVID-19 Pandemic via a Remote Lab.

Practical knowledge is essential for engineering education. With the COVID-19 pandemic, new challenges have arisen for remote practical learning (e.g., collaborations/experimentations with real equipment when face-to-face offerings are not possible). In this context, LabEAD is a remote lab project that aims to provide practical knowledge learning opportunities for Brazilian engineering students. This article describes how engineering project management methods consisting of application domains, requirement identification, technical solution specification, implementation, and delivery phases, were applied to the development of an Internet of Things (IoT) remote lab architecture. The distributed computing environment allows integration between students' smartphones and IoT devices deployed in campus labs and in student residences. The code is open-source for facilitated replication and reuse, and the remote lab was built in six months to enable six experiments for the digital electronics lab during the COVID-19 pandemic, covering all the experiments of the original face-to-face offering. More than 70% of the 32 students preferred remote labs over simulations, and only 2 were not approved in the digital electronics course offered remotely.Student perceptions collected by questionnaires showed that they could successfully specify, develop, and present their projects using the remote lab infrastructure in four weeks.

DISINFECTION WITH VAPORIZED HYDROGEN PEROXIDE FLUID IN DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENTS AND ITS APPLICATIONS AND ADVANTAGES IN CRISIS MANAGEMENT

During a global pandemic, mitigating the impact of the disease and coordinating efforts to manage not only the medical but also the logistical and administrative aspects of such an all-encompassing phenomenon are of paramount importance. An extremely important but less publicised issue in this context is laboratory management and safety in analytical laboratories. In times of high capacity utilisation, as is the case during a pandemic or endemic outbreak of disease, other routine processes have to be abbreviated or are cancelled altogether due to lack of planning owing to the rapid emergence of the outbreak. In order to achieve high level of cleanliness in laboratories of all shapes and sizes and with different requirements, a universal solution seems unimaginable. Our experiments show a promising, automated approach of disinfection of various spaces. Within a short timeframe of 1 h – 3 h it is possible to disinfect any desired room to achieve a laboratory grade hygiene status. This was proven by employing biological indicators validated for this procedure. The tested technology reduced the indicator germs by a concentration of the mathematical log 6 reduction. Achieving this high level of cleanliness is possible by assigning a single person to the task for the set-up at the scene. Steering and monitoring of the process can be done remotely. While the machine used in our experiments is not a completely new concept, our experiments in a real-life setting such as laboratories and clinics alike, show that the applied hydrogen peroxide vapour distributed by a specialized fogger, disinfects even hard to reach spots within closed-off spaces. This program can be performed while automated (PCR) machines are running and highly trained personnel can apply their expertise elsewhere. Moreover, while the program is running real-time data is available and the process can be remotely monitored and steered digitally. It is of major concern to ensure maintainability of infrastructure e.g. COVID labs, ambulances, laboratories or veterinary practitioners to ensure treatment of directly and indirectly related health issues within a crisis. We concentrated on evaluating the usability of the disinfection technology presented in real-life settings. © 2022 IDIMT. All rights reserved.

Remote implementation of a discrete temperature control by hysteresis

The practices of face-to-face or conventional laboratories are essential for the training by competences of the student of electronic engineering. However, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic at FIEE-UNMSM, it has been decided to carry out virtual laboratory practices using only simulators, harming the practical training of the student. This has motivated the implementation of remote laboratory practices, where the student can experiment with real physical devices at a distance. In this sense, as a prototype, the laboratory practice of discrete temperature control by hysteresis has been developed, using the Arduino Uno card programmed in Bascom-AVR, LabWindows/CVI for the graphical interface and the Team Viewer software for the remote connectivity of users. Obviously, the learning outcome compared to simulated practices is superior and is expected to be as close as possible to the laboratory presence. © 2022 IEEE.

Design and Implementation of a Remote Lab for Investigation of DC Motors

The last two years and the COVID-19 situation showed the need to ensure sustainable engineering education via the use of virtual and remote laboratories. The aim of the article is to design a laboratory model for studying the characteristics of DC electric motors. The implementation is based on different well know solutions, such as Raspberry PI, ESP32, power modules and sensor. The communication is based on the TCP/IP protocol and the control of the power modules is implemented using PWM. The IoT implementation of the lab is based on the Home Assistant platform, which allows monitoring and control of remote devices. The study also presents the schematic diagram of the virtual laboratory system, which allows to explain and substantiate the role and behavior of each component. © 2022 IEEE.

Conducting an Electronics Remote Lab Experiment: A Case Study

A laboratory experiment in an undergraduate course on electronics was conducted remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. The lab assignment was to construct and analyze a single-transistor NPN amplifier. In the conventional on-site lab experiment the students would construct the amplifier on a breadboard, carry out measurements of DC and small signal characteristics, and compare with both SPICE simulations and manual calculations. The pandemic prevented the attendance of students in the lab, and thus the experiment was redesigned and carried out online, using remotely controlled instruments through the internet. It was found that to some extent a remotely conducted experiment can substitute the on-site work, and there are some unique advantages of this approach. On the other hand, some aspects of the on-site laboratory experiment cannot be substituted by the remote experience, and this is discussed in the paper. © 2022 IEEE.

DC machines remote lab case study in Technical and Vocational University

Practical study such as laboratory activity helps students to learn about engineering technical courses. New electronic technologies and the Internet of Things allow students and researchers to do experiments remotely. During quarantine due to pandemics such as Covid-19 or when researchers and students are not present in the university, remote laboratories are used as a complementary teaching feature. In these conditions, the remote laboratories also allow the development of experimental-based research. This paper presents the design and development of a remote interactive laboratory for the teaching and practical learning of DC machines at Technical and Vocational University. This laboratory is designed using the Arduino board to make a data acquisition card and actuator controller. Also, LabVIEW is used, which is remotely controlled based on the Internet and allows students to observe and perform experiments related to the DC machines course anywhere and anytime. In this laboratory, to better adapt to the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology criteria, the principle of teamwork to perform the experiments and achieve the final result has been considered. The case study results of a remote laboratory in Mohajer Faculty present the students' understanding and satisfaction in obtaining the required scientific competencies from the proposed laboratory.

At-Home Yogurt Making to Investigate Microbiology Concepts: A Remote Biology Laboratory

The global COVID-19 pandemic has forced many educators to move their courses to the online environment with little time to adjust. It especially affected undergraduate biology laboratory courses that rely on on-campus facilities to provide students with meaningful laboratory-type experiences. Here we describe a multisession, at-home, and hands-on laboratory activity that utilizes yogurt culturing to explore microbiology concepts. We also summarize the findings of 219 undergraduate students who successfully performed this lab remotely. In small virtual groups, students learned how to make yogurt at home, formulate a testable hypothesis, run an experiment on conditions necessary for yogurt fermentation, analyze experimental results, and present their results to peers in an oral scientific talk. Practical considerations include the use of low-cost and accessible materials, low-tech yet effective quantification approaches, and online note-taking and data management tools to coordinate group work and provide informal and formal assessment.

Experiential Learning Through Remote Electrical Engineering Labs During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Engineers learn best via experiential learning. With the COVID-19 pandemic, the safe-distancing measures have disrupted regular teaching activities across the world. While numerous engineering schools have resorted to e-learning, there is a risk that many would sacrifice the hands-on learning experience for the students. We adapted a freshmen electrical engineering module into mostly home-based learning mode, while retaining its experiential learning focus through remote lab activities with synchronous supervision. Our survey results and analyses showed that, although students felt face-to-face labs provided them with better hands-on training compared to online remote labs, they were still able to perform as well as previous cohorts in terms of their understanding of the principles taught. A key drawback of online remote labs is the difficulty to help students with debugging. This might be mitigated with the use of software tools that help students take a more active role in debugging on their own. © 2021 IEEE.

Converting a Face-to-Face Laboratory into a Remote Solution System: A Case Study in the Industrial Networks Laboratory

The closure of universities due to COVID19 generated uncertainty in the continuity of the teaching-learning process, so the Institutions turned to online formats to continue the academic program. However, specialized equipment used in engineering laboratories was being left out of the learning process. This work addresses the transformation of a laboratory course from a face-to-face format to an online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the technical and operational problems in the transformation process and the proposed solutions. Finally, the perception of students about the experience of using the Remote Laboratory is addressed. In addition, the results of institutional surveys are presented comparing results between two teachers of different generations X and Millennial. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.