Using Remote Experimentation in a Large Undergraduate Course

Session S4G

Using Remote Experimentation in a Large Undergraduate Course: Initial Findings M. C. Costa Lobo, Gustavo R. Alves, M. A. Marques, C. Viegas, R. G. Barral, R. J. Couto, F. L. Jacob, C. A. Ramos, G. M. Vilão, D. S. Covita, Joaquim Alves, P. S. Guimarães, Ingvar Gustavsson [email protected], [email protected] Abstract - The use of remote labs in undergraduate courses has been reported in literature several times since the mid 90’s. Nevertheless, very few articles present results about the correspondent learning gains obtained by students, and in what conditions those systems can be more efficient, thus suggesting a lack of data concerning their pedagogical effectiveness. This paper addresses such a gap by presenting some initial findings concerning the use of a remote lab (VISIR), in a large undergraduate course on Physics, with over 550 students enrolled. Index Terms - Remote laboratories, weblabs, learning assessment, engineering education. INTRODUCTION The importance of laboratory experience in engineering education curricula has been emphasized in a large number of science and engineering education articles [1]. Laboratory pedagogy has been recently reported to be a fertile arena of research for the coming years [2], especially in the context of the increasing need to make more use of the new developments in information and communication technology for enhancing the laboratory education. When technologyintensive teaching tools become widely available, the traditional roles of the university lecturers will change from pure classroom-based teaching to one of consultation, advice and direction giving. However, it is believed that the technology-based course will not eliminate the educators; instead it will change the type of activities the educators do. In the technology-based teaching/learning practice, the major activities of the lecturers may include preparation of the software packages, adopting new concepts and new teaching practices, modifying existing materials to suit the changes introduced by the latest version of the multimedia tools, and above all these they can spend time to continuously evaluating the teaching/learning outcomes. The roles of teachers and students are changing, and there are undoubtedly ways of learning not yet discovered. However, the computer and software technology may provide a significant help to identify the problems, to present solutions and life-long learning. It is clear that the computer-based educational technology has reached the point where many major improvements can be made, and significant cost reductions can be achieved, specifically in the area of engineering education. The proper use of techniques and methodologies is critical in any technology intensive

teaching/learning development system. In addition, it should be ensured that the designed work keeps up with the curriculum review and update, and the laboratory work should be relevant to the material taught in lectures. One reason for rethinking the role of the laboratory in engineering and science education is the recent shift towards constructivist pedagogy in which the importance of knowledge gained via experience is emphasized. Furthermore, constructivist pedagogy places a larger role on student autonomy in the learning process. This is particularly important in light of the recent increase in the needs of industry for engineering graduates who are autonomous and equipped with good hands-on skills. In their literature review [1], Ma and Nickerson found that 100% of the articles concerning hands-on laboratories considered that labs should be platforms for facilitating conceptual understanding, and 65% considered that laboratories should also facilitate the design skills. However, constructing knowledge is a complex process which is often out of the timeframe of the planned laboratory sessions. Since 2000, a huge number of remote laboratories have been designed, implemented and set up over the world. [1]-[4]. Papers and books about remote labs focusing on their advantages/disadvantages, state of art, technologies, and didactic have been published. Most of these works are focused on the technology and only few articles are focused on the didactic utility of remote labs as a didactic tool. Understanding how different technologies affect the laboratory learning experience is an endeavor which will need the participation of many researchers over many years. In this paper we seek to contribute toward this larger project. We address the role of the laboratory environment while conducting experiments for perceiving some fundamental concepts of electrical circuits, namely the behavior of simple circuits built with resistors, coils and capacitors, when powered with DC and AC sources. We have used a set of tools for assessing the learning gains obtained by students enrolled in a large Physics course of an undergraduate degree on Computing Engineering. Students were divided into two natural groups: one attending both real and remote lab classes and another simply using the remote lab. Preliminary results indicate that both students groups presented learning gains, which suggests the remote lab used to be a good learning tool for developing experimental skills in the taught topic. The rest of this paper is organized as follows: section II describes the assessment scenario, namely

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Session S4G the remote lab environment, i.e. VISIR (Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality), the course curricula and structure, and the assessment methodology; section III presents the assessment results, organized in two categories, namely the integration of VISIR in the target course and the students’ results; finally, section IV concludes the paper. SCENARIO AND METHODOLOGY I.

The VISIR system

VISIR is an open remote lab dedicated to experiments on electrical and electronic circuits, acquired by and installed at the School of Engineering – Polytechnic of Porto (ISEP), Portugal, in July 2010. Its architecture and characteristics are well described in several articles [5]-[6]. In this paper, we concentrate on describing the actions done by persons using this system under three different roles (administrator, teacher, and student), to emphasize its simplicity, minimal learning curve, and reduced institutional impact, namely on integration and maintenance aspects. Figure 1 illustrates the three main components used at ISEP to store and manage institutional data (Portal), pedagogic contents (Moodle), and, most recently, to provide remote experiments (VISIR). When starting a new semester, teachers have access to structured information on both Portal and Moodle, i.e. they will have access to the course(s) they will be lecturing, and all the students enrolled in those courses will also have access to teaching & learning materials made available by teachers. Adding VISIR implied some organizational rearrangement, namely on how to manage teachers and students access to the remote lab, and on how to manage the courses created on it. The next paragraphs will therefore describe the actions done by administrators, teachers, and students, in VISIR, following a sequential timeline.

Administrators start by creating a given course. They then add (i) the responsible for the course (a given teacher), (ii) other teachers / instructors (typically, courses with hundreds of students have a team of several teachers), and finally (iii) the students enrolled on that course. Presently, this last action simply implies copying & pasting the list of e-mails of those students enrolled in the same course, into VISIR, as also depicted in Figure 1. In conclusion, although VISIR is a fairly new component, it implied a reduced extra effort into current ISEP administrators’ tasks. This fact is thought to be crucial to convince institutional managers that remote labs do not represent an additional cost, in terms of workload, to the Communications & Informatics Service [7]. Once the course is created, the head-teacher is able to add new experiments according to the course practical component. This follows a procedure described in [8], where the teacher needs to be aware of the components physically available in the VISIR matrix, or, if not available, indicate his/her needs to the lab technician, responsible for configuring and updating the matrix. Assuming that the components are available in the matrix and that their images are also available in the list of components depicted by the VISIR interface, in teacher mode, the teacher may then add a new experiment to its course and then add a direct link to it, into the corresponding Moodle course page. Again, these actions are illustrated in Figure 1. Students access VISIR either through the link provided in the Moodle course page, where in each case they will be required to enter their login credentials and after that will be directed to the related experiment or, through the VISIR URL. In this last situation, students will also have to indicate their login credentials and then will be directed to a page that contains a navigation menu on the left side, where students can see the courses they are enrolled in. Selecting a particular course will open a page displaying the list of experiments currently available on that course. Students may then select one experiment, ending up on the same page they would get if following the direct link provided in Moodle. In both situations, VISIR will track the students’ access by incrementing a counter indicating the number of sessions done by each student. Additionally, the VISIR log system tracks the number of experiments done, i.e. the number of times the button “Perform experiment” is clicked, and hence and experiment is done in the remote lab. This log system does not, however, record who has done which experiment, thus not allowing tracking the experiments (and their setup) done by each individual user (either students or teachers). II.

FIGURE 1 SITES USED FOR INSTITUTIONAL AND TEACHING & LEARNING PURPOSES AT ISEP AND ACTIONS DONE BY ADMINISTRATORS AND TEACHERS IN VISIR

Environment description

ISEP is an engineering school offering a large number of bachelor and Master Degrees and Post-graduate courses in various engineering areas, ranging from Electronics, Instrumentation and Computing to Chemistry, Mechanics, and Metrology. In our study, the choice of an adequate case study environment relied on the assumption that students from Computing Engineering degree would have a natural tendency to use the kind of resources a remote lab

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Session S4G represents. Also, Electricity is a topic covered in Applied Physics which is a 2nd year course, where 2nd year students are normally more aware of their academic responsibilities. Like all engineering degrees at ISEP, this is also a 3-year degree, where 1st year students acquire mathematical, programming and lab work skills. Fundamental science subjects, like Physics, is only taught in the 1st semester of the 2nd year, being Applied Physics course the sole opportunity students have contact with physics at university in this this degree. Our study was developed over this semester, with 561 students enrolled in the course. Applied Physics was organized in 12 weeks, from which 6 weeks were dedicated to electricity - from September, 27th to November, 1st - and the other 6 weeks to waves and heat transfer. Since students perform lab work, their assessment is divided in two parts: (i) lab work assessment with an overall weight of 40% and (ii) final examination with an overall weight of 60%. Students were divided in two groups according to their enrollment requisites. Group A, accounting for 288 students, is the group attending hands-on lab work classes. In those same weekly classes, group B, with 273 students, analyses results taken with VISIR in the previous weekly class, comparing them with a comparative theoretical circuit analysis. This happened during weeks 2 and 4, as depicted in TABLE I. This group already has a lab work mark from previous years. The number of students in each classroom of both groups was quite different. The fifteen classrooms from group A had a maximum of 24 students each, organized in working groups of 3-4 students. The four group B classrooms had almost the double number of students.

Weeks Week 1 27/9 Week 2 4/10 Week 3 11/10 Week 4 18/10 Week 5 25/10 Week 6 1/11

TABLE I LABORATORY CLASSES PLAN FOR TOPIC ON ELECTRICITY. Organization of topic electricity for lab classes Group A Group B Introduction to VISIR. Taking measurements in the remote system for a DC experiment described in the lab guide. Real DC circuit mounting and Comparative DC analysis performing measurements. with values from previous 24h to hand-over the group lab class and components report. nominal values. Introduction to VISIR. Taking measurements in the remote system for an AC experiment described in the lab guide. Real AC circuit mounting and Comparative AC analysis performing measurements. 24h with values from previous to hand-over the group lab class and components report. nominal values. Teachers use VISIR to Individual lab report related to demonstrate the previous one of the two experiments AC circuit as a passive done. filter. 1st partial examination related to this topic. (a) (a) For group A the 1st partial examination is done in the problem solving classes.

As shown in TABLE I, in the first week, all students were introduced to electricity in theoretical classes, where concepts like resistors associations and Ohm’s and Kirchhoff’s laws for DC circuits were taught. At the same time, and also for all students (both groups), VISIR was introduced by teachers in the first laboratory class, starting

with a small presentation of the VISIR interface and explanation about its usage. After this introduction, teachers asked their students to try for themselves, in order to accomplish the designed circuit of the laboratory task. Every student was provided with a lab guide describing the experimental procedure for a DC circuit, which apart from being implemented, they had to take measurements from. As stated before, in the week after only group A had hands-on lab classes to mount the same circuit. During the following two weeks, this procedure was repeated for an AC circuit, with the help of the corresponding lab guide. 24 hrs after each real-circuit implementation class, every group had to hand-over a lab report where they had to include hands-on circuit measurements and VISIR measurements. During week 5, every student, individually, had to write an extended report on one of the experiments done with the measurements previously taken, being applied only to group A. In week 6, every student performed a partial assessment. III.

Assessment Methodology

The analysis is based on a case study investigation [9], since it is grounded on an empirical study of a real discipline, its problems characterization and potentials encountered during the integration of the remote laboratory (VISIR) in an Introductory Physics course. The two natural students’ groups created (A and B, already explained in the previous section), allowed us to asses VISIR effectiveness in different types of students. These collected data not only regards students’ knowledge and competency gain in this subject, but also students’ usage of VISIR and students and teachers perceptions along the course.  VISIR Usage: Teachers and students usage of the system was registered and allowed us to analyze the total amount of sessions run by each student and the global long term (during the 6 weeks) frequency of usage.  Teachers Perceptions: All teachers involved in this course were interviewed and shared their experience about their real practice with VISIR. Some of them, who had past experience lecturing this course, compared some of the characteristics.  Knowledge and Competence Assessment: The knowledge and competence questionnaire was constructed by the course head-teacher together with other teachers/researchers and meant to assess some of the most significant issues of the taught subject. Some of the questions were addressed to directly infer the common knowledge of the students (questions 1 and 2); other questions meant to infer some laboratory competences development (questions 3 and 4); we identified a last set of questions (questions 5, 7 and 8) which was more specific to the characterization of DC and AC circuits. The other two questions (6, 9) were procedural, about parallel and series components in a circuit. All teachers delivered those questionnaires in class, on paper, before and after the lectured subject. In order to allow us to compare results for each student, these questionnaires were not anonymous. An

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Session S4G explanation of its goals (simply for research purposes) was made by every teacher. Even though the questions were the same in the pre test and post test, their order was changed to avoid memorization.  Students Perceptions: All students were subject to a second questionnaire (based on some literature with similar purpose [10]-[12]) which meant to assess students’ satisfaction and their perception of learning outcomes using VISIR. This questionnaire was done anonymously, accessing a Google page at the end of the course. In addition to this large inquiry, some students of each teacher’s class were interviewed in order to reach a more personal view of the class implementation of VISIR and to better understand students’ autonomous usage of the system. These students were chosen because of their higher number of run sessions at VISIR and a more significant gain on the competency test, or exactly the opposite.  Course Results: These results included the laboratory reports assessment, frequency of the course and exams’ classification. ASSESSMENT RESULTS The results were organized into two categories: i) implementation of the system in a large course; ii) students’ learning results and perceptions while using this system, both focusing on the differences encountered in the two analyzed groups of students. I.

On VISIR Course Integration

 VISIR Usage: Using the information available in the VISIR log system, we first analyzed the total number of accesses (i), the number of activated accounts (ii), the number of activated accounts with zero accesses (iii), and the number of daily accesses (iv) of both students and teachers. This initial analysis was already presented in [13]. In this paper we focus on the analysis of students’ accesses, from groups A and B, according to their daily classes, throughout the six-weeks period of the module on electricity. Therefore, we present the distribution of daily classes, per week, for groups A and B, in Table II. Figure 2 presents the charts with the daily number of accesses, of students’ groups A and B (figure top and bottom, respectively), versus the number of daily classes. A careful analysis of the depicted charts, considering the laboratory classes plan for the topic on Electricity (Table I), allows to extract the following conclusions: TABLE II CLASSES DISTRIBUTION FOR STUDENTS’ GROUPS A & B Hour/day Mon. Tue. Wed. Thu. Fri. 10:00 11:00 A A A B A A 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 A 14:00 15:00 A A 15:00 16:00 B B 16:00 17:00 A A A A 17:00 18:00 21:30 22:30 A A A 22:30 23:20

Sat. B

FIGURE 2 ACCESSES VS. DAILY CLASSES FOR GROUP A STUDENTS (TOP) AND FOR GROUP B STUDENTS (BOTTOM)

 Group A students have used VISIR following what was required from them, either in week terms (see top of figure 2) – access patterns in weeks 1 and 3 following the pattern of daily classes and access patterns in weeks 2 and 4 denoting the 24-hrs period to hand-over the group lab report. As using VISIR was not compulsory (but just complementary) in week 5, the number of accesses from group A students is clearly residual. In week 6, where the use of VISIR was not even complementary, the number of accesses drops to almost zero.  Group B students denote a more autonomous usage, evidenced by the lack of an access pattern close to the pattern of daily classes. Furthermore, the number of accesses in week 6 (in opposition to the number of accesses from group A students, in week 6) is also in line with this conclusion. Basically, one may say that these students take advantage of the complementary nature of remote labs.  Teachers Perceptions: All teachers were interviewed and shared their class experience and their perception about students learning concerning VISIR usage. This analysis is presented in Table III.

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Session S4G All teachers agreed that students of group A showed, in general, more laboratory competences in assembling the circuits’ components and indeed a much lower percentage of burning multimeter fuses was found (nearly half of the one encountered in previous years). As to students’ knowledge of the subjects, teachers agree that even though this is more difficult to infer, it is unlikely that a greater benefit has been produced. However, some teachers referred that higher gains can be achieved in students who closely follow class developments or who have already mastered part of it (especially group B), once they better realize the potential of the system in order to help them in their difficulties. TABLE III TEACHERS’ PERCEPTION ANALYZES. VISIR Usage Group A Group B students’ students brought their fewer computers than it visible computers (1 or 2 per group) was desirable (0 or 1 per interest group) teacher shows how it is done (more detailed in 1st class) students work depends on students little interact in 1st work in class teachers explanations; more class and in the following autonomous work in 2nd classes work with class teachers’ help some students worked some students use VISIR autonomous beyond the expectations, in order to successively work outside bringing printouts of the improve their learning class VISIR circuits to help them in the hands-on lab circuits assembling greater security while improvement; better handling circuits laboratory performance of data management competences acquisition; greater security development while handling circuits management epistemic not evident a few students showed development some improvement Training possibility allows students to gain confidence Greater Possibility of working lab competences outside class value Students’ motivation Give a meaningful feedback, in order for students to improve their work and teachers to be able to use it to reach out their difficulties VISIR has limited possibilities, if possible this should be Future improved (or at least give information of these kind of suggestions error as a “non error” to students) More experiments (different situations) in order to do the linkage to theoretical models

II.

On Students’ Results

 Knowledge and Competence Assessment: Even though these tests were delivered in class, allowing everyone to participate, we only got 178 results from group A and 49 from group B, which represents nearly 41% of the total amount of students. The students’ results were treated according to Marx & Cummings gain lines [14], which means positive gain lines of 20%, 40%, 60% and 80%, successively, in the upper left triangle and similar negative gain lines in the lower right triangle. Group A (Figure 3) shows a large percentage of students with positive gains – the majority has gains between 0-40%. Group B (Figure 4) presents similar results, slightly improved: the majority has a gain between 20% and 40%.

FIGURE 3 GAIN RESULTS IN THE TOTAL QUESTIONNAIRE, FOR GROUP A STUDENTS

FIGURE 4 GAIN RESULTS IN THE TOTAL QUESTIONNAIRE, FOR GROUP B STUDENTS

As explained, questions addressed different objectives. In order to be able to recognize and more clearly identify those gains, we analyzed these data separately, referring only to questions 3 & 4, which addressed directly the development of laboratory competences, respectively for both students groups, A and B. The general gains in these two questions are the greatest observed in all sets of questions delivered. Once again it is perceived a similar distribution, with Group B showing fewer problems in handling those questions before and after working with VISIR, not even showing cases of 0% in the post test. Students Perceptions: A group of students who were  identified as enthusiastic users were invited to an interview. Students largely reported doing access from home, outside of school, and described the access sessions to last about 15 to 30 min. Noteworthy is the fact that most of these students

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Session S4G

STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION QUESTIONNAIRE RESULTS Results Questions (using a Likert scale: 1 - minimum and 5 Standard - maximum Average deviation Did VISIR help you on: a) concepts and problem solving? 3.40 1.07 Q1 b) handling the equipment? 3.57 1.22 c) Mounting the circuits? 3.84 1.20 Did VISIR motivate you to the learning Q2 2.77 1.26 objectives? a) Provided usage information was sufficient? 2.61 1.10 Q3 b) Was VISIR operating in stable conditions? 3.66 1.26 Would you like to have similar systems for Q4 3.34 1.44 other course subjects?

 Course Results: Although it was not possible to compare directly between laboratory evaluation (concerning VISIR implementation) with previous years, in general, the teachers noticed a slight increase in the reports’ classification, based in a more complete data collection (this analysis was made only for students in group A, since the group B maintained the frequency of laboratory grade). Although this can not be directly attributed to VISIR usage, it shows that students were not harmed in their knowledge construction, by using VISIR. The exams’ results, after analyzing the issues directly related to the subject worked with VISIR, strongly enhance the differences between the two groups of students. Figures 5 and 6 show the grades obtained in the two exam questions related to this theme (P1 - DC, P2 - AC, and Additional - an optional question which allowed students to improve their

G roup A

S tudents ' P erc entag e

80%

F inal G rade 60%

Additional P 1 (D C )

40%

P 2 (AC )

20% 0% 0

10

20

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G ra de (0-100)

FIGURE 5 GRADES DISTRIBUTION IN EXAM QUESTIONS, FOR GROUP A STUDENTS

G roup B 80%

S tudents ' P erc entag e

TABLE IV

thematic assessment evaluation). The final grade distribution is also presented, for information purposes.

F inal G rade 60%

A dditional P 1 (DC )

40%

P 2 (A C )

20%

0% 0

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FIGURE 6 GRADES DISTRIBUTION IN EXAM QUESTIONS, FOR GROUP B STUDENTS

Although the overall results are very poor - which is usual for this course - group B students show a relatively higher ratings distribution. Comparing the results of the students who used VISIR with those who did not (e.g. for the P1 exam question, as shown in Figure 7 and 8), it appears that not only students who used VISIR can achieve better overall results, but also that group B students have a slight supremacy. Group A 40%

Students' Percentage

say they have experienced the VISIR beyond what was required in the laboratory classes and have also used VISIR to check elements of the lecture. Regarding the perceived advantages for using VISIR, the interviewed students expressed the view that VISIR helped to better understand concepts, enhance training and clarity of procedures, increasing motivation. Some students suggest the existence of tutorials to support the use of VISIR. They all recognized VISIR as a good instrument to improve their laboratory skills. Some of them compared with their previous experience at the course and stated that it had improved and that this year they understood the subject better due to it. At the end of the course, students were asked to complete a questionnaire about their perception of the utility VISIR had to their learning and motivation. This was not mandatory, yet 185 students choose to share their opinion, which represents a sample of 33 %. As can be seen in TABLE IV, students agree that VISIR was most helpful in developing laboratory competences. Even though they did not feel it helped with their motivation, a great percentage would like to extend its usage to other subjects, showing their palatability towards the system. These results also indicate that the system has not shown many irregularities, but students felt that a formal tutorial could have been helpful, as some of them stressed out in the interviews.

Students who used VISIR 30%

Students with no VISIR access

20%

10%

0% 0

20

40 60 Grade (0-100)

80

100

FIGURE 7 GRADES DISTRIBUTION ON P1 EXAM QUESTION, FOR GROUP A STUDENTS

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Session S4G [6]

Group B 40%

Students' Percentage

Students who used VISIR

30%

Students with no VISIR access

[7]

20%

[8] 10%

[9]

0% 0

20

40 60 Grade (0-100)

80

100

[10]

FIGURE 8 GRADES DISTRIBUTION ON P1 EXAM QUESTION, FOR GROUP B STUDENTS [11]

CONCLUSIONS Currently there is a consensus in the remote lab literature that a combination of remote and hands-on laboratories is useful for students' learning be better sustained [1]. In our study, we found that students, who already attended the hands-on lab classes, could easily accompany the course using VISIR. In general, comparing VISIR usage and students’ results, students of group B (who already attended lab classes) seems to be able to make more use of the system, despite their initial reluctance (seen for instance in the number of computers brought to class) and they show a more continuous usage of the system throughout the 6 weeks, which can mean they use it in order to study for their class assessment on this material. In fact all our results point to similar or better results in these students. Our findings are also aligned with literature concerning the motivation and enthusiasm raised on students [3]. Since the same tool was available to all students, we were able to compare the way it leveraged students to use it. This approach enabled to perceive a more active role dependent on how students felt its usefulness, which is readily achieved in group B students, who already understand their difficulties more easily and are able to potentiate their learning with VISIR. REFERENCES [1]

[2] [3]

[4]

[5]

Ma, J & Nickerson, J. V. Hands-On, Simulated, and Remote Laboratories: A Comparative Literature Review. ACM Computing Surveys, vol. 38, no. 3, article 7. 2006. Feisel, L. D.,Rosa, A. J. The role of the laboratory in undergraduate engineering education. J.Eng. Education, 121–130. 2005. Lindsay, E. D., & Good, M. C. Effects of laboratory access modes upon learning outcomes. .IEEE transactions on education, vol. 48, no. 4, pp.619-631. 2005. Nickerson, J V; Corter, J E; Esche, S. K. & Chassapis, C. “A model for evaluating the effectiveness of remote engineering laboratories and simulations in education”. Computers & Education, Volume 49, no.3, pp. 708-725. 2007. I Gustavsson, J. Zackrisson, K. Nilsson, J. Garcia-Zubia, L. Håkansson, I. Claesson, and T. Lagö, “A Flexible Electronics Laboratory with Local and Remote Workbenches in a Grid,” International Journal of Online Engineering (iJOE), vol. 4, n.º 2, pp. 12-16, 2008.

[12]

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[14]

I. Gustavsson et al., “On Objectives of Instructional Laboratories, Individual Assessment, and Use of Collaborative Remote Laboratories,” IEEE Trans. on Learning Tech., vol. 2, pp. 263-274, Oct.-Dec. 2009. N. Hine et al., “Institutional Factors Governing the Deployment of Remote Experiments: Lessons from the REXNET Project,” 4th International Conference on Remote Engineering and Virtual Instrumentation (REV'07), Porto, Portugal, June 2007. I. Gustavsson, “Teacher manual for VISIR,” https://openlabs.bth.se/electronics/index.php?page=AboutPage#, accessed 8th December, 2010. Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. Research Methods in Education (6th ed.). London and New York: Routdlege Falmer, 2007 I. Gustavsson et al., “On objectives of Instructional Laboratories, Individual Assessment, and Use Collaborative Remote Laboratories”, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES, vol.2, nº4, October-December 2009, pp.263-274. J. Garcia-Zubia, Hernández, I. Angulo, P. Orduña and J. Irurzun, “Acceptance, Usability and Usefulness of WebLab-Deusto from the Students Point of View”, Acceptance, Usability and Usefulness of WebLab-Deusto from Students Point of View, 2009. A. Hyder, S. K. Choi and D. Schaefer, “Remotely Controlled Laboratory Experiments: Creation and Examples”, Proceedings of 2010 IEEE Systems and Information Engineering Design Symposium, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA, April 23, 2010. Gustavo R. Alves et al., “Using remote experimentation in a large undergraduate course: initial findings”, IEEE Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), pp., Amman, Jordania, April 2011. J. D. Marx and K. Cummings, “Normalized Change”, American Journal of Physics, 75(1), pp.87-91, 2007.

AUTHOR INFORMATION M. C. Costa Lobo, Psychologist, ISEP - School of Engineering Polytechnic of Porto, [email protected] Gustavo R. Alves, Adjunct Professor, ISEP - School of Engineering Polytechnic of Porto, [email protected] M. A. Marques, Adjunct Professor, ISEP - School of Engineering Polytechnic of Porto, [email protected] C. Viegas, Adjunct Professor, ISEP - School of Engineering - Polytechnic of Porto, [email protected] R. G. Barral, Adjunct Professor, ISEP - School of Engineering Polytechnic of Porto, [email protected] R. J. Couto, School of Engineering – ISEP - School of Engineering Polytechnic of Porto, [email protected] F. L. Jacob, ISEP - School of Engineering - Polytechnic of Porto, [email protected] C. A. Ramos, Adjunct Professor, ISEP - School of Engineering Polytechnic of Porto, [email protected] G. Vilão, Junior Professor, ISEP - School of Engineering - Polytechnic of Porto, [email protected] D. S. Covita, Invited Professor, ISEP - School of Engineering - Polytechnic of Porto, [email protected] Joaquim Alves, Adjunct Professor, ISEP - School of Engineering Polytechnic of Porto, [email protected] P. S. Guimarães, Junior Professor, ISEP - School of Engineering Polytechnic of Porto, [email protected] Ingvar Gustavsson, Senior Professor, Blekinge Institute of Technology, [email protected]

978-1-61284-469-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE October 12 - 15, 2011, Rapid City, SD 41st ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference S4G-7