A federation of VISIR remote laboratories through the PILAR Project
This paper describes how a new Erasmus Plus project, PILAR, (Platform Integration of Laboratories based on the Architecture of visiR), is being developed and how the startup of the partnership and the project is reinforcing the VISIR (Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality) network and the Special Interest Group of VISIR under the Global Online Laboratory Consortium (GOLC) of the International Association of Online Engineering (IAOE). The Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED) coordinates the project that aims to federate the existing (or new) VISIR systems in order to use the resources more effectively and in a more efficient way, making transparent to the final user the election of the shared resources.
Re-design of a MOOC RLMS based in Moodle
In 2013, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department (DIEEC) of the Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED) launched the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that, besides the usual features of these courses, includes the extensive use of a real remote laboratory dedicated to practices in electronic circuits. The MOOC was named: "Circuits Fundamentals and Applied Electronics" (BCEP; in Spanish "Bases de Circuitos y Electronica Practica") and has been re- edited every year since then. Although the nature of this MOOC is completely open, this course targets especially people with at least basic circuits knowledge. The main objective of the course is to acquire practical competences in basic electronic circuits and provide to students a work philosophy when facing up real experimentation. The core of the MOOC is the remote laboratory VISIR, which has been given the leading role in the course: evaluation and activities spin around the remote laboratory and the objectives and evaluation are focused on handling the instruments and the interpretation of the measurements obtained from the remote laboratory, knowledge on electronics are on no account evaluated despite being necessary to understand the behavior. This paper describes the design, development and first results and impressions of a novel Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) on industrial electronics practices. This was possible by implementing a state-of- the-art remote laboratory within the MOOC to allow online delivery of such practices—which makes this MOOC a first of its kind. Thus, the core of the MOOC is the remote laboratory Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality (VISIR) and the experimentation carried out on it. This paper presents the framework and structure of a new family of MOOCs and remote lab VISIR integration obtaining Remote Learning Management System (RLMS) evolved from BCEP MOOC. The structure make the most of BCEP MOOC learning analytics and the logs stored by VISIR. The students' profile interested in this kind of MOOCs and their needs for getting advantage out of the remote laboratory have been also considered. Keywords—MOOC; RLMS; Remote Laboratory; VISIR; electronics competences.
Collaborative Web Labs as a Service: Challenges and opportunities
Collaborative Web Laboratories are the last frontier of virtual environments in education. As Internet speed grows up and academic networks reach more students and researchers, universities take interest in sharing laboratory services to increase the spectrum of offered facilities. The aim of the paper is to discuss the opportunities and issues to manage and deliver Collaborative Web Laboratories as a Service in an academic scenario.