Using remote labs in education: two little ducks in remote experimentation

A book about remote labs and engineering education begs to begin with the question, “Why do engineering programs include lab work?” Although this may seem like a given and not worth discussing, whenever we’re faced with innovative ideas, it’s important to “put everything on the table” in order to reassess its value to our program or goals. What is it about lab work that is of value to students? Are there elements of traditional labs that we could let go of? Are there elements that we don’t want to lose? These questions can help us to clarify how and why labs are integrated into an engineering education program.

«Second Best to Being There» is the title of the first chapter of this book. It is written by pioneers (Shor Bohus, Aktan) in remote experimentation in 1993 and it describes that a student/teacher can access a real experiment through Internet as being in the real lab. Chemistry, materials, electronics, physics and control engineering integrated in different remote labs are presented: iLAB (MIT, USA), VISIR (BTH, Sweden), labShare (UTS, Australia), and LiLA (Cambridge, UK).