e-Lab: An electronic classroom for real-time distance delivery of a laboratory course

Journal of Engineering Education, Oct 2001 by Gurocak, Hakan

6. Creates unprecedented student motivation that cannot be created using software simulations or videotapes of equipment.

7. All students, especially the remote ones, are very excited about being able to work with real equipment without having to travel to the campus.

8. The e-Lab melts down the hundreds of miles between the sites. The real-time nature of the WHETS is very effective in eliminating physical distance. In addition, the high speed of the control link over the Internet (due to low amount of control data transmitted) makes the students feel like they are standing next to the equipment.

B. Disadvantages

1. Extremely time consuming to develop curriculum.

2. Difficult to test curriculum before lab sessions due to multiple sites and distributed computing. Since the labs were developed while the course was offered and since the only time all of the equipment came together was at lab sessions, it was not possible to test a newly developed lab before the lab was actually offered to the students.

3. Difficult to maintain software on remote PCs. If software on a remote PC is damaged or needs to be upgraded, we had to get in touch with the WHETS operator at that site and have a telephone conference to walk him through the installation or repair steps.

4. Remote students cannot touch the hardware. Although this appears to be a disadvantage, in general, many students even in a regular lab setting do not get to touch the hardware due to crowded classes, limited number of hardware or time.

5. Having two MPS systems running at the same time will require a T.A. in lab sessions along with the instructor. In the first offering all of the labs were managed by the instructor alone. It was found out that having a teaching assistant would help the load on the instructor during lab sessions.

6. Interactive TV systems are available only in 14 states.

7. Requires a lot of advance planning.

VII. CONCLUSIONS

Based on student course evaluations, exam scores, informal conversations with the students, surveys and the instructor's impressions, the course in this new format has been a great success. The new approach was very exciting for everybody including the WHETS operators. All students, especially the remote ones, were very excited about being able to work with real equipment. It was interesting to see that we could melt down the hundreds of miles of physical distance between the sites using this approach. Students got used to the new classroom setting very rapidly and the use of technology in creating the e-Lab quickly became transparent. The system provided a very active learning environment. In every lab, teams were in competition with each other to get their machine working first. Although this was not an intended outcome of the new approach it emerged as one of the features of the e-Lab. Sometimes the competition turned into Boeing against WSU while other times it was Pullman against Vancouver. The student motivation was unprecedented. The labs were so much fun that the students were asking for more lab sessions. This is quite pleasing, yet somewhat unusual, coming from undergraduate students.