North American Network of Science Labs Online

Environmental Scan

Projects Outside the US and Canada

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This list contains projects that, while RWSL-like are not within the US and Canada.  It is important to be aware of these projects as they probably have information and experience that we can draw from, but they do not fall within the scope of the NANSLO project Environmental Scan proper.

 

The Records included here are not complete, but they are outside the is Environmental Scan.  There is information here that should not be lost, so they are being maintained here until such time as the scope of this scan is expanded.  Included here are the following:

• Labshare, or Labshare Institute
• Remotely Controlled Laboratories
• International Association of Online Engineering
• LiLa (Library of Labs)
• Global Online Laboratory Consortium

 

There is also a list of some members of the global remote lab community at the end. 

 

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Name:

LabShare, Labshare Institute

 

Location: University of Queensland in Australia

 

URL(s):

http://www.labshare.edu.au/home

http://www.labshare.edu.au/project/

 

Contacts: helpdesk@labshare.edu.au

 

Participating institutions:

 

Funding Source(s): Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations

 

Purpose:

Labshare Mission

To create a nationally shared network of remote laboratories. This will result in higher quality labs that support greater student flexibility and improved educational outcomes, improved financial sustainability, enhanced scalability in terms of coping with student loads, and are developed and run by those with the best expertise.

 

The Labshare project, funded by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, has as its core aim to develop both the technical infrastructure and a sustainable organisational strategy that will support ongoing sharing of remote laboratory facilities and resources. A key outcome of the project is the Labshare Institute. As a not-for-profit organisation, the Labshare Institute will act as an independent service broker to a national network of educational and research institutions who provide and/or utilise shared remote laboratories. Fundamentally, Labshare is about establishing a remote labs sharing community and fostering development of high quality, cost-efficient labs for education.

 

Executive Summary:
There has been growing world-wide interest in the use of remotely accessible laboratories. Compared to traditional laboratories where students must be physically present, this approach allows students to utilize the internet to remotely interact with physical laboratory infrastructure. The most advanced examples are currently MIT’s iLabs and the UTS remote laboratories (with an enhanced facility recently launched by Senator Kim Carr).
By removing the requirement of co-locating the students and the hardware, we are potentially able to realize numerous benefits, including:

• The convenience of being able to complete laboratory work from outside the University, and at any time of day.
• The secure nature of the laboratories means that equipment attrition through loss or misuse is minimized, reducing maintenance costs.
• The economy offered by the security and reduced maintenance costs, facilitates the acquisition of expensive, specialized and elaborate experimental apparatus.
• Remote access to the laboratory increases the potential user base for the laboratory – facilitating sharing of laboratories across multiple programs and institutions, leading to much improved utilization of expensive laboratory infrastructure.

Whilst most of the technological problems have been predominantly solved, many of the benefits associated with increased student flexibility and improved learning outcomes are yet to be consistently achieved. This is due, at least in part, to the lack of a common understanding regarding how and when remote laboratories can best be utilized in supporting student learning, and the factors which affect their effectiveness.
This project has helped to address this situation by investigating student reactions to remote laboratories, including evaluation of cross-institutional access issues based on a broader diverse base of students for evaluating educational outcomes. The factors which have the potential to affect student learning in designing remote laboratories have been identified and documented. Two key issues which we have considered in detail include students’ acceptance of the reality of the laboratory experience, and how professional reality is reflected in the laboratory design.

 

Policies:  Unknown at this time

 

Procedures:  Unknown at this time

 

Hardware:  See website

 

Software: Looks like LABView

 

Scheduling Solutions:  Unknown at this time

 

Academic level:  Unknown at this time

 

Academic area:  See website

 

Lab names: See website

 

Capacity: Unknown at this time

 

Comments:

• The service offered here is used by iLab Network and has been sited as the most successful utilization of the iLab Shared Architecture.
• This project requires further investigation perhaps in an extended NANSLO project

 

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Name:

Remotely Controlled Laboratories - RCLs

 

Location:

Kaiserslautern, Germany

 

URL(s):

http://rcl.physik.uni-kl.de/

 

Contacts:

Project Leader

Prof. Dr. H.-J. Jodl
E-Mail: jodl@physik.uni-kl.de
web: pen.physik.uni-kl.de/w_jodl

 

Participating institutions:

University of Technology Kaiserslautern
Department of Physics
Working Group Prof. Jodl
Erwin-Schrödinger-Straße
D-67663 Kaiserslautern
Germany

 

Funding Source(s):  Unknown at this time

 

Purpose:  Unknown at this time

 

Policies:  Unknown at this time

 

Procedures:  Unknown at this time

 

Hardware:  Unknown at this time

 

Software:  Unknown at this time

 

Scheduling Solutions:  Unknown at this time

 

Academic level:  Unknown at this time

 

Academic area:  Unknown at this time

 

Lab names:

Photoelectric Affect

Radioactivity

World Pendulum

Millikan's Experiment (AKA Millikan Oil Drop Experiment)

Diffraction and Interference

Rutherford's Scattering Experiment

Electron Diffraction

Wind Tunnel

Speed of Light

Optical Fourier Transformation

Order-Disorder Transitions (in planning)

Hotwire

Robot Maze

Semi-conductor Characteriatcs

Oscilloscope

Optical Computed Tomography

Toll System

 

Capacity:  Unknown at this time

 

Comments:

• [RKE] There is more material here in German than in English.
• [RKE] This project is very similar to RWSL in concept.
• [RKE] This project requires further investigation perhaps in an extended NANSLO project

 

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Name:

International Association of Online Engineering

 

Location: Europe

 

URL(s):

http://www.online-engineering.org/

http://openlabs.bth.se/

 

Contacts:

Michael E. Auer, Andreas Pester and Heimo Ressler

 

Participating institutions:  Unknown at this time

 

Funding Source(s):  Unknown at this time

 

Purpose:

• The International Association of Online Engineering (IAOE) is an international non-profit organization with the objective of encouraging the wider development, distribution and application of Online Engineering (OE) technologies and it's influence to the society.
• The association seeks to foster practices in education and research in universities, higher education institutions and the industry on OE.
• Moreover the IAOE promotes OE for the improvement of living and working conditions.
• The IAOE encourages the exchange of knowledge as well as the exchange of staff and students between co-operating institutions.

 

Policies:  Unknown at this time

 

Procedures:  Unknown at this time

 

Hardware:  Unknown at this time

 

Software:  Unknown at this time

 

Scheduling Solutions:  Unknown at this time

 

Academic level:  Unknown at this time

 

Academic area: Engineering

 

Lab names:

Telerobotics and Advanced Control, Wireless Communication, Remote Engineering Applications, Digital Signal Processing

 

Capacity:  Unknown at this time

 

Comments:

• Most of the links don't seem to work, but this looks like it consists of simulations or purely computer-based experiments. The Digital Signal Processing experiment looked like it might be an RWSL type of setup, but it appears to need a login with password.

 

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Name:

LiLa (Library of Labs)

Location: Europe

 

URL(s):

http://www.lila-project.org/resources/Documents/index.html

This link is to their research offerings. Explore and view their PPT introduction for background.

http://www.lila-project.org/about/presentation/LiLa_Presentation.pps

This link is to a power point document describing LiLa.

 

Contacts:  Unknown at this time

 

Participating institutions:

Eight European institutions and three companies collaborate in the sharing of remote and virtual labs.

 

Funding Source(s):  Unknown at this time

 

Purpose:  Unknown at this time

 

Policies:  Unknown at this time

 

Procedures:  Unknown at this time

 

Hardware:  Unknown at this time

 

Software:  Unknown at this time

 

Scheduling Solutions:  Unknown at this time

 

Academic level:  Unknown at this time

 

Academic area:  Unknown at this time

 

Lab names:  Unknown at this time

 

Capacity:  Unknown at this time

 

Comments:

 

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Name:

Global Online Laboratory Consortium

 

Location: Global

 

 

URL(s):

http://www.online-lab.org/

 

Contacts: golc-ec@mit.edu

 

Participating institutions:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Technology, Sydney, University of Stuttgart, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Makere University, Technische Universität Graz, The University of Queensland, TU Dortmund University and International Association of Online Engineering, WICHE Internet Course Exchange

 

Funding Source(s):  Unknown at this time

 

Purpose:

The Global Online Laboratory Consortium is focused on promoting the development and sharing of, and research into remotely accessible laboratories for educational use. As the usage of online experiments gains traction in the educational community, there is increasing interest in developing online labs on a common infrastructure. A unified and interoperable architecture is essential to convert the current tremendous interest for online experiments into an economy of labs that can be efficiently shared around the world.

 

" The mission of the consortium is the creation of sharable, online experimental environments which increase the educational and scientific value of learning which may not be accessible, scalable or efficient through traditional methods".

 

This means especially:

• to encourage and support the creation of new online labs and associated curricular materials;
• to sponsor the design of an efficient mechanism for sharing, exchanging and trading access to online labs by creation of a global network of shareable experiments;
• to support communities of scholars created around online laboratories; and

 

 

Policies:  Unknown at this time

 

Procedures:  Unknown at this time

 

Hardware:  Unknown at this time

 

Software:  Unknown at this time

 

Scheduling Solutions:  Unknown at this time

 

Academic level:  Unknown at this time

 

Academic area:  Unknown at this time

 

Lab names:  Unknown at this time

 

Capacity:  Unknown at this time

 

Comments:

• Perhaps we should join this one.  This is a worldwide effort to bring remote engineering labs into a single organization.  It does not appear to create or host its own remote labs.

 

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The Global Remote Lab Community

Here are some groups that have related concepts incorporating remote access to real physical equipment.

 

GOLC, Global Online Laboratory Consortium

iLough-Lab, University of Loughborough

iSES, internet School Experiment System

LiLa project, Library of Labs

MIT iLabs, Massachusettes Institute of Technology

NANSLO, North American Network of Science Labs Online

UQ iLabs, University of Queensland

UniSA NetLab, University of South Australia

UTS Remote Laboratory

WebLab, University of Deutso