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In the Covid 19 pandemic, education shifted from offline to online, impacting a lot of technical education. The online theory courses were conducted effectively, but there were a lot of problems the faculty faced in conducting laboratory courses. This problem includes an ineffective demonstration of lab experiments, difficulty in time management, monitoring, and assessment, inability to tackle the issues of various students' learning styles, and unavailability of a common platform for online lab conduction. In technical education, the lab course plays a vital role. We found that a virtual laboratory is the best solution to address these issues. Many virtual labs are available for programming courses but need a customized Virtual lab for core courses. In this paper, we have carried out 16 surveys through Google forms to get inputs/feedback from faculties and students to get difficulties in online lab conduction and how we can make the best use of virtual labs online to conduct the lab experiment online mode. We designed and created the virtual laboratory for the Computer Networks Lab course with various learning materials, including theory, simulation videos, pre-test & post-test, and the procedure to conduct the lab experiment, which benefited the students. The implemented virtual lab found more effective. We found the significant impact on the result of CN Lab after using the customized virtual lab for CN Lab course. © 2022, Rajarambapu Institute Of Technology. All rights reserved.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the student fraternity to physically access the laboratory and conduct experiments offline. Across the world, new platforms have been designed with ICT tools for the smooth conduction of academics specifically for laboratory courses. This article aims to provide quality circle-based guidance to the community to develop a Virtual Laboratory. The virtual lab is developed through an emphasis on Quality Circle methodology. The Quality Circle team has developed an instructional methodology known as the virtual laboratory (VL). It incorporates pedagogical techniques that help students to better understand the theoretical concepts in an effective and joyful way. © 2022, Rajarambapu Institute Of Technology. All rights reserved.
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The pandemic Covid-19 has brought a change in the education significantly. As we all know that Education Industry was the drastically hit industry in the service sector. The future of education completely depends upon experiential learning. Now the students can find their courses and books online where they can study as per their own schedule. In these times of need, online learning tools emerged as a boon. In this regard the department tried to design and implement a web-based simulation models under Virtual BIZ & Investment Lab for the student Learners. This paper talks about the benefits of Virtual lab and how it will expose the student learners to real world problem solving and decision making issues to make them industry ready. © 2022, Rajarambapu Institute Of Technology. All rights reserved.
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In 1984, the film "The Terminator” predicted that a hostile Artificial Intelligence (AI) will threaten to extinguish humankind by 2029. Even though the real present is quite far from this post-apocalyptic scenario where AI rebels against its creator, a growing concern about the lack of ethical considerations in the use of AI is rapidly spreading, leading to the current "ethics crisis”. The lack of clear regulations is even more alarming considering that AI is becoming an integral part of new educational platforms. This follows the wave of digital transformation mainly induced by the Fourth Industrial Revolution, with advances in digitalization strategies, and the COVID-19 crisis, which forced education institutions worldwide to switch to e-learning. The appeal of AI is its potential to answer the needs of both educators and learners. For example, it can provide help grading assignments, enable tutoring opportunities, develop smart content, personalize and ultimately boost on-line learning. Although the "AI revolution” has great potential to improve and boost digital education, there are no clear regulations in place to ensure an ethical and fair use of AI. Therefore, this work aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the current concerns regarding fairness, accountability, transparency and ethics in AI applied to education, with specific focus on virtual laboratories. The main aspects that this work aims to discuss, and provide possible suggestions for, are: (i) ethical concerns, fairness, bias, equity, and inclusion;(ii) data transparency and digital rights, including data availability, collection, and protection;and, (iii) collaborative approach between disciplines. © 2022 SEFI 2022 - 50th Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education, Proceedings. All rights reserved.
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The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has modified teaching and learning throughout the world. The developments in Information Communication Technology tools have played a critical role in the education community. During the pandemic, the organization and conduction of theory classes in Universities across India were managed reasonably on one side, but the problem existed in laboratory courses. A singlepoint portal is needed to organize and conduct a laboratory course in a virtual mode. While creating a virtual lab (based on the syllabus) would solve the need, creating such would be a tedious task for the teachers, requiring special skills and resources. Google Sites is a free website application tool that allows users to create and edit files online while collaborating with others in real-time. The application includes other Google applications such as Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, Google Slides, Google Forms, Google Drawings, and Google Keep. Google Sites also accepts any online links or files, which is handy for creating a simplified virtual curation lab for free using common online resources. © 2023, Grand Canyon University. All rights reserved.
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This is a brief overview on student engagement and perception of remote practical activities during the COVID-19 outbreak emergency. The topics that were heavily affected by these sudden and unexpected changes, where chemistry, biochemistry, bioinformatics, pharmacology, and compounding. This survey took responses from the students of both bachelor and master's degrees at the School of Pharmacy of the University of Milan. This University is in the epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. Despite a good or high appreciation of the online practical activities, up to 95% of participants agreed that multimedia content cannot efficiently replace inperson labs. Moreover, discussions with the teachers and discussions among lab mates has a great positive impact on the knowledge and skills they acquire. Copyright © 2020, International Pharmaceutical Federation. All rights reserved.
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Balance control systems are known to be one of the most crucial and challenging systems in the field of controls engineering. Rotary Inverted Pendulum (RIP) system is an experimental platform which can perform a wide range of balance control experiments. In an era where physical movements are restricted and with social distancing and remote learning, conducting laboratory experiments have become much more challenging. Hence, the goal of this study is to test the feasibility in performing laboratory experiments on a RIP system in a simulation environment for distance learning purposes. In this study, the developed RIP system was used to perform experiments on PID and LQR control. All the simulations were performed using SolidWorks®, Simscsape Multibody link and MATLAB® Simulink® software. When the simulations were tested for distance learning, identical results were observed proving the feasibility of linear & nonlinear simulations for remote-learning. Hence, this simulation platform is capable of fulfilling the task of providing hands on experience in control engineering laboratory experiments for remote/distance learning purposes. © 2022 IEEE.
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During the coronavirus crisis, labs had to be offered in digital form in mechanical engineering at short notice. For this purpose, digital twins of more complex test benches in the field of fluid energy machines were used in the mechanical engineering course, with which the students were able to interact remotely to obtain measurement data. The concept of the respective lab was revised with regard to its implementation as a remote laboratory. Fortunately, real-world labs were able to be fully replaced by remote labs. Student perceptions of remote labs were mostly positive. This paper explains the concept and design of the digital twins and the lab as well as the layout, procedure, and finally the results of the accompanying evaluation. However, the implementation of the digital twins to date does not yet include features which address the tactile experience of working in real-world labs.
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In recent years, the education officials have been forced to cancel classes and close the doors of the campus across the world in response to the growth of coronavirus outbreak. Due to the development of e-learning, a significant transformation is happening in education. Digital platforms are used in e-learning for giving instructions remotely. The faculty chose to take video conference classes using one platform and the resources are uploaded in another platform which are accessed by students. But while coming to laboratory classes, the hands-on experience of students on the equipment and components are totally missed. Resources are in the colleges and students are at home. This separation creates a long gap in the education. At KPR Institution of Engineering and Technology (KPRIET), a virtual lab setup with controllers and essential hardware modules was implemented in the Internet of Things (IoT) laboratory of Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE) Department, where students can access and control it from their current location using secured login credentials.Virtual setup provides an easy access for the students to get hands-on experience with the academic laboratory sessions. These sessions are very useful for the students to gain more relevant and keen knowledge of their laboratories. This project provides a greater number of students to engage with their academic theory and practical laboratory sessions. We use server software and addons along with Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) as well as Virtual Network Computing (VNC). © 2022 IEEE.
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Since the start of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, many microbiology lab activities have been conducted online. We produced a simple PCR primer design and virtual PCR activity for introductory students to use as part of an online laboratory course or as an independent activity in a traditional laboratory setting. Most students are aware of basic PCR concepts but struggle with important details, such as how PCR is specific and how false positives and negatives can be generated in a diagnostic test that is not well designed. This exercise helps students review molecular biology concepts within the context of a test that was commonplace during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that nursing students and Biology and non-Biology majors were able to complete the worksheet as a group with minimal instructor input. This could be used as a stand-alone activity, as a warm-up for other bioinformatics exercises, or as a prelab activity for actual in-lab quantitative PCR experiments, such as the one offered by miniPCR bio. With minor modifications, it could also be used with more advanced students.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many changes in learning methodologies at all educational levels, including higher education. Under these circumstances, one of the most difficult challenges to face is to approach practical and laboratory learning at university when students' attendance to the physical laboratory space is restricted. The future graduates of Bachelor's Degree in Biotechnology are appealed to master many instrumental techniques related to this field. The article describes the scaffolding actions carried out to successfully adapt onsite laboratory sessions to virtual ones and evaluate the students' perception about the contribution of the online methodologies to the practical skills of bioprocess engineering. Two voluntary groups of students were formed, one to attend the practical lessons on site and the other online. The suggested scaffolding was structured in four different types of materials and resources: screencasts, pedagogical articles, calculation sheet templates and online assessment tests. Students' perception was collected by means of an e-questionnaire. About 70% of students thought the online platform allowed them to follow the practical tasks in a way equivalent to face-to-face teaching and 62.1% found that online model presents more advantages than disadvantages than the onsite model. 85.7% of students considered that practical tasks highly contributed to their capacity of solving complex problems and master mathematical tools, while 65.7% of them associated the practical task with their availability to understand the principles of bioengineering. However, 40% of them thought that the online model satisfactorily contributes to the acquisition of these specific skills.
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During the closure of K-12 schools and universities due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many educators turned to web conferencing tools such as Zoom and WebEx to deliver online lectures. For courses with labs, some teachers provide recorded videos of real labs. Watching recorded lab videos is a passive experience, as the procedures and point of view are fixed, and students do not have any control of the lab and thus miss the opportunity to explore different options, including making mistakes that is important part of the learning process. One approach that holds great potential to enhance laboratory experience for online education is the use of computer-based modeling and simulation tools. Simulation based virtual laboratories emulate lab equipment and configurations in highly realistic 3D environments and can provide very effective learning experiences. While there exist limited interactive lab computer simulations for various subjects, their presentations are still very primitive and often lack realism and complexity. This paper presents methodologies and preliminary findings on rapid development of advanced virtual labs using modeling and simulation for in-person and online education. The importance of modeling and simulation has long been recognized by the scientific community and agencies such as DoD and NSF. However, high-quality simulations are not commonplace, and simulations have not been widely employed in education. Existing simulations for education lack interoperability and compatibility. While there are sporadic uses of computer-based simulations in education that were developed in a piecemeal fashion, there was never systematic development at an industry level for such purposes. Virtual lab development usually require substantial amount of effort and lack of systematic research on rapid virtual lab development hinders their wide use in education. This paper proposes a wholistic and systematic approach for addressing the issues in rapid lab simulation development from several perspectives, including rapid generation of virtual environment, integration of state-of-the-art industry leading software tools, advanced software design techniques that enables large scale software reuse, and innovative user interface design that facilitate the configuration and use of virtual labs by instructors and students. This paper will implement a virtual circuit lab that emulates a circuit lab for the course PHYS 303 offered at Old Dominion University and will be used to elucidate the crucial methodologies for rapid virtual lab development. The virtual lab contains highly realistic visual renderings and accurate functional representations of sophisticated equipment, such as digital oscilloscopes, function generators, and digital multimeters, and authentic rendition of the lab space. The virtual lab allows analog and digital circuit simulation by integrating the de-facto industry standard circuit simulation engine SPICE and Xspice, supporting the circuit labs in course PHYS 303. The Unity game engine is used to develop the front end of the virtual lab. Advanced software development methodologies will be investigated to facilitate software reuse and rapid development, e.g., the same simulation code can be used to support equipment manufactured by different vendors. The paper will also investigate the impact of fidelity of the virtual lab, e.g., equipment and lab room, on student learning outcomes and efficacy. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.
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Virtual Reality (VR) has became a significant element of education throughout the years. To understand the quality and advantages of these techniques, it's important to understand how they were developed and evaluated. Since COVID-19, the education system has drastically changed a lot. It has shifted from being in a classroom with a whiteboard and projectors to having your own room in front of your laptop in a virtual meeting. In this respect, virtual reality in the laboratory or Virtual Laboratory is the main focus of this research, which is intended to comprehend the work done in quality education from a distance using VR. As per the findings of the study, adopting virtual reality in education can help students learn more effectively and also help them increase perspective, enthusiasm, and knowledge of complex notions by offering them with an interactive experience in which they can engage and learn more effectively. This highlights the importance for a significant expansion of VR use in learning, the majority of which employ scientific comparison approaches to compare students who use VR to those who use the traditional method for learning. © 2022 ACM.
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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.
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Production systems are being expanded to include Digital Twins (DTs) as part of increased industrial digitalization. DTs can bring benefits e.g., increase visibility, safety, and accessibility of the system. Further, digital experimentation can reduce time and cost. Though, application of DT technologies involves challenges i.e., model accuracy or errors in transferring data or codes between the DT and the physical twin. Many studies on DTs focus on industrial applications. However, DT technology has potential for implementation of digital labs in education. This aspect of DTs is of rising importance as distance education has increased over the last decade and access to physical laboratories can be restricted due to factors such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Thus, there is a need to study the use of DT technology in higher education. To address this, we investigate possibilities and challenges of applying DT technology in education to conduct industrial-like labs virtually. A case of an automation line, with full scale industrial equipment, based at a research center, is focused. Results emphasize that the application of DT technologies require multi-domain expertise to understand the consequences of every single decision in the design process on every piece of equipment involved, making the modelling process complex and time consuming. Thus, when applied in education, test procedures need to be designed to focus on students' motivation, improved learning and understanding of production systems. DTs are considered enabling technologies supporting the concept of Industry 5.0, thus stressing the human-centric aspects of advancing Industry 4.0. The predicted application of DTs emphasizes the need for educational curricula that include laboratory applications and theoretic understanding of DT technologies. This study focusses the application of DT technologies in higher education curricula, but the result of the study can contribute to other areas such as automation and virtual commissioning towards smarter manufacturing. © 2022 The authors and IOS Press.
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The recent SARS-CoV2 pandemic has put a great challenge on university courses. Electronics teaching requires real laboratory experiences for students, which cannot be realized if access to physical infrastructures is prohibited. A possible solution would be to distribute to students, at home, electronics equipment suitable for laboratory experiments, but no reasonable product is currently available off-the-shelf. In this paper, the design and development of a very-low-cost experimental board tailored to these needs is presented. It contains both programmable prototyping circuitry based on a microcontroller and an FPGA and a set of measurement instruments, similar to the ones found on a typical lab desk, such as a digital storage oscilloscope, multimeter, analog signal generator, logic state analyzer and digital pattern generator. A first board, suitable for analog and digital electronics experiments, has been designed and manufactured, and is described in this paper. The board has been successfully used in master's degrees and PhD courses.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted , Electronics , Equipment Design , Humans , RNA, Viral , SARS-CoV-2ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has heavily impacted academics' professional and personal lives, forcing many research groups (labs) to shift from an academic system primarily based on in-person work to an almost full-time remote workforce during lockdowns. Labs are generally characterized by a strong lab culture that underpins all research and social activities of its members. Lab culture traditionally builds on the pillars of in-person communication, knowledge sharing, and all social and professional activities that promote collaboration, team building, scientific productivity, and well-being. Here, we use the experience of our research group facing the COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate how proactively reinforcing lab culture and its positive outcomes have been essential to our lab when transitioning from an in-person to a remote lab environment, and through its ongoing evolution toward a hybrid remote/in-person model. We argue that the proactive promotion of lab culture in research groups can foster academic resilience during crises, helping research groups to maintain their capacity to conduct scientific activities while preserving a sustainable life/work balance and a healthy mental condition.
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This paper introduces an Augmented Reality (AR)-based chemistry (ARChem) lab platform for teaching and assessment. The current in-class lab teaching has several drawbacks such as the high cost of lab materials, physical constraints in lab sizes, and exposure to hazardous materials. Besides, with Covid-19, access to the in-person labs and materials is significantly restricted. This restriction hampers regular lab instruction, self-learning, and hands-on experience. Our ARChem platform stems from the motivation of delivering a similar experience to regular instruction. In addition, ARChem aims to promote learning and advancement by incorporating gaming elements. Also, assessment and evaluation are provided for self-improvement. Our ARChem in-class chemistry lab uses a physical environment and virtual lab equipment and fluids. The environment is based on the AR technique where virtual lab equipment and materials (e.g. fluids and supplies) are overlaid on the physical environment using only mobile devices. To do this efficiently, ARChem provides computationally optimal methods such as simulating multiple bimanual chemistry reactions, low-cost fluid physics in containers, and realistic visualization. We enable a realistic lab environment with minimal hardware constraints attaining high simulation and visual frame rates. This simulation efficiency makes ARChem compatible with a wide range of low-end mobile devices and is accessible to any student. Our ultimate goal is to eliminate the drawbacks of current in-class teaching with a simulation environment and improve remote and asynchronous learning experience especially during an outbreak like Covid-19. © 2021 IEEE.
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The paper presents the development of a virtual simulation lab that provides theoretical content, simulations, models, videos, animations, comparative simulations, simulation benches, and self-check quizzes for e-learning and self-study. Self-assessment evaluates the learning capability and knowledge of students. Virtual lab may play a role to teach students without any assistance of teachers or professors in this coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic situation. The COVID-19 pandemic situation has barriers between students and universities in delivering lectures in classroom. Virtual simulation labs can change the traditional teaching practices of classroom teaching in the world. The virtual lab is developed due to the limited equipment of experiments and simultaneously assisting students. Web-based educational resources have taken an important place in e-education and self-study through an e-learning platform. Virtual simulation lab is an e-learning platform where students can perform experimentation without any direct involvement on instruments in physical lab. An interactive virtual lab is developed to provide web-based global access to everyone without any authentication. This lab does not require any credentials to login into website. This lab provides multiple options for experimentations of various simulations. This can be accessed through web address http://14.139.245.230/mfvlab/home.php and contains over 950 simulations. Each module contains theory as well as audio embedded videos to reduce time and effort required to understand and analysis of various process parameters. Comparative simulation compares among different materials and processed and different parameters with interactive graphs. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Although various resources exist for facilitating online laboratory courses, stitching together disparate elements from multiple sources may not be sufficient to meet the learning goals of a given course. For example, our Biology Project Lab course introduces students to an array of fundamental laboratory techniques, and the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the development of virtual laboratory options for remote learners. We anticipated that the logic and application of the course material-a multiday sequence of connected experiments-would be lost if we combined prefabricated labs from a variety of sources. Moreover, we wanted students to familiarize themselves with our laboratory equipment, while providing interactive experiences rather than passive video demonstrations. Therefore, we used Storyline 360 to create a series of interactive lab modules to accommodate students who were remote or in quarantine. These online labs were integrated with our learning management system (LMS) and included exercises such as video demonstrations, short answer responses, image selection, drag-and-drop activities, and organizing procedural steps. Our simulations can be shared with instructors and customized for their own interactive labs, or instructors can build course-specific modules from scratch using the Storyline 360 platform. Although the simulations could not fully replicate the in-person learning experience, students appreciated being able to watch and participate in lab activities and recommended that the labs be retained as supplemental activities in future semesters. Storyline 360 thus offers an effective platform for developing virtual laboratory modules which may be widely adapted to suit the specific needs of a variety of laboratory courses.