T6-AD1-3 - Remote Labs Didactics

1. Innovative Practice Work In Progress
Eti De Vries1 , Heinrich Wörtche1
1 Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Groningen, the Netherlands

Abstract WIP – Remote labs didactics, an innovative practice (Short paper track proposal)

Not all universities can afford to have state-of-the-art laboratory facilities for technical and computational students to practice, especially not in the rapidly changing society we live in. Remote labs are an opportunity for students to get access to equipment and devices and learn how to handle them, without having or being able to be present at the same location. Remote labs offer students the possibility to develop and operate electronic (sensor) devices using facilities in a partnering institute and provide students the option to get acquainted to programming and to operating remote instrumentation. This way, students can get access to equipment wherever located. Literature around the topic of how to teach and facilitate learning in remote lab’s (Torre, Sanches & Dormido, 2016) shows that remote labs allow students to access the resources several times as well as giving them a greater amount of time to complete a specific lab task – students can work on their own pace, repeating and adjusting, fostering a deeper learning this way. Students like the possibility to work from home, and to have access to the remote labs on various times and locations. In researches, educational benefits of remote labs are not often the main focus (Post et al., 2019). The objective of this innovative practice is to establish didactical methods within the specific context of remote labs, from an educational scientist point of view. By doing so, new methodologies will created and the range of distance didactics will be expanded. Distance learning, e-learning and distance education can provide with examples, but will not tell the whole story. Scenarios in different situations will be investigated for (learning and teaching-)purposes in remote lab’s:

- students working at various locations and various times;

- students working at various locations at the same time;

- students working independently and in groups;

- students getting guidance via ICT and/or lecturers;

- lecturers working at various locations and various times;

- lecturers in the physical vicinity of students.

References

Post, S., Guo, P., Saab, N., & Admiraal, W. (2019). Effects of remote labs on cognitive, behavioral, and affective learning outcomes in higher education. Computers & Education, Vol. 140. Doi: https://doi,org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.103596

Torre, L. de la., Sánchez, J.P. & Dormido, S. (2016). What can remote labs do for you. Physics Today 69(4), 48. Doi: 10.1063/PT.3.3139 View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3139