VIRTUAL-LABS SIG

1. VIRTUAL-LABS SIG • Name of the SIG • Covered research topics • Possible activities 1st draft L. Indrusiak

2. Special Interest Group in... • ...Virtual and Remote Labs (VRL) • ...VRL in Engineering (VRLE) • ...Virtual and Remote Education (VRE) • ...VRE in Engineering (VREE) • ...Distance Learning and Experimentation (DLE) • ...DLE in Engineering (DLEE) • ...

3. Special Interest Group in... • any other alternatives? • are we restricted to engineering? • distance education/e-learning is a large umbrella which is already covered by other SIGs: should we specialize in practical activities/experimentation (labs, exercises, tests)?

4. Research areas • technical infrastructure and methodologies for distance education • distance teaching • distance practical activities (exercises) • distance tests • distance laboratory activities • some techniques and methodologies are common to all those areas, some must be custom-made (specific)

5. Common needs • pertinent research topics which are common to all areas: • reuse of educational material (EM) (how to make a course/exercise/test/lab based on the components designed by someone else) • storage, search and retrieval of EM • management of intellectual property in EM (if authors want to earn money/recognition with the material they created)

6. Common needs • pertinent research topics which are common to all areas : • teacher-student and student-student communication (are web-based forums and Microsoft tools enough?) • teacher-teacher communication (how can we encourage teachers to interact and exchange experiences among themselves? are web-based forums enough?)

7. Common needs • pertinent research topics which are common to all areas : • methodology definition: how to define tracks so that the students follow a logic way through the educational material (plain hyperlink chain is not flexible enough, specially in the case of complex interfaces such as those of remote and virtual labs)

8. Specific needs • pertinent research topics for remote labs: • standard interfaces for controlling remote lab equipments (can we come up with a set of modules that would allow the automatic generation of a GUI for every remote lab based on a set of specifications of the controls are given to the student and the feedback the lab provides?) • dynamic loookup and access authentication for remote labs (standard way to find and login into a remote lab) • equipment safety in remote labs (experiment constraints: e.g. voltage set by students should smaller than 5V) • ...

9. Specific needs • pertinent research topics for remote tests/exercises: • how to guarantee that a given student is taking a distance test him/herself? • how to avoid the disclosure of the contents of tests? (so that students will not only student the question list!) • how to evaluate? multiple choice is easy. but how about the rest? • ...

10. Summary of the research areas • Development of Educational Material for e-Learning • design and reuse • storage, search and retrieval • intellectual property management • educational methodology definition and validation • Development of Remote Tests and Exercises • evaluation strategies • security and confiability • Communication platforms in e-learning • teacher-student • student-student • teacher-teacher • Development of Remote and Virtual Labs • controlling and feedback interfaces • lookup and access methods • equipment safety • novel application domains good starting point for our next call for papers!

11. Planned activities • mailing list • website • annual or bi-annual special session or workshop co-located with related conference • best papers of the session/workshop recommended to submit extended version to a journal (which?)