ISSUES IN USING REMOTE LABORATORY EXPERIMENTATION FOR TRANSNATIONAL EDUCATION Prof. Lawrence O. Kehinde, Dr. Kayode Ayodele, Mr. Olawale Akinwale, Prof. Oladipo Osasona Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria
INTRODUCTION • Remote experimentation is the performance of either virtual or real hardware based laboratories by students from anywhere, and at any time. • Remote experimentation for transnational education will certainly involve development of manpower and collaborative skills, experimental interface design skills and curriculum adjustment. Nowadays, employers tend to look beyond the class of degree of applicants and look into experiences in collaboration that engenders leadership qualities.
BENEFITS OF REMOTE LABS
iLab OAU
REMOTE LABS IN AFRICA
• Ability to share experimental set ups between institutions. • Development of human, hardware and software expertise and lab infrastructure through collaboration. • Mentorship by academic superiors • Leveraging institutional collaboration through required curriculum upgrade. • Reduced cost of lab education per institution • Fosters Intercultural Communication skills
• Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) had been involved in remote experimentation through tutelage and grants from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Carnegie Corporation, USA. [1]. • There are existing collaborative works in remote laboratory [1], [2], [3] • OAU is one of the leading universities in Nigeria and has been a full collaborator in the iLab—Africa Project for eight years • OAU is a member of the Global Online Consortium OAU (GOLC) • iLab OAU is partnering with OAU Distance learning who in turn is partnering with the Open UDSM Makerere Univ. University, UK.
SPECIFIC ISSUES IN TRANSNATIONAL COLLABORATIVE EXPERIMENTATION • Ensuring uninterrupted power supplies, • Possible difficulties in harmonization of lab curricula • Language barrier-between English and French speaking countries especially in West African • Different cultures • Different socio-economic situation • Issues of different time zones • Inadequate bandwidth to support experiments • Determining cost of ownership of labs and cost of use of labs. • Ensuring standardization of labs, ranking of labs so that user-institutions can assess the pedagogic value of a lab before signing up for it • Determining responsibility for upkeep of the labs and payment of developers in joint collaboration.
Collaboration [4]
The proposed African COMMONS architecture [5]
The remote labs team in OAU has worked on: • • • • • • • •
Robotic arm labs Control engineering labs Strength of materials lab Telecommunications labs Advanced digital electronics labs Online labs with mobile devices Entry level Chemistry experiments Operational amplifier labs • Realistic interfaces for labs
ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS TO ISSUES • Backup solar panels, inverters and generators power supply • Joint development of curriculum between institutions: sample Elect/Elect Eng. OAU. • The use of realistic Interfaces – to minimize the need for text • Use virtual reality, augmented reality or 3D animations. • Employ the concept of social networks in online labs. • Chat communication windows • Unmediated student collaboration • Provide online help text in different languages • Lab result feedback from the remote lab to the client may have to include text, video and audio, and take note of impaired users. • Make the lab equipment more like building blocks so students innovate in putting them together – e.g. use programmable parts. • Agree on policy for usage of the iLabs in the higher education space. • Minimized bureaucracy in lab development and deployment • Address Cost of Ownership and Cost of Use issues. • Develop assessment schemes to determine quality of developed remote labs • Use webcam and animated control panel
CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
Laboratory resources are already being shared, and sharing is becoming more common as institutions realise they cannot stand alone. For example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's remote labs are used by Nigeria's OAU, Makerere University in Uganda and the University of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania. In turn, Makerere University provides Uganda's Busitema University with access to its own remote labs and OAU is working to provide access to its remote labs for Nigeria's University of Ibadan, Bells University of Technology and Redeemer's University. But we need to create a truly collaborative online lab environment where students can come together to talk about ideas, organise into groups, work on projects and showcase their achievements. This may not fit into any particular degree programme or curriculum. But it creates a space for innovation, a space for students to express and try out their ideas. Each participating institution would be required to own a Service Broker. In the iLab Shared Architecture (ISA), the Service Broker is a server (web services) which handles the authentication of users logging on to it. With each institution owning and managing its own service broker, the iLabs pool would not need to know the individual students. The pool would only interact with the service brokers which would have been registered with it
[1] Kehinde, L. O., Chen, X., Ayodele, K. P., & Akinwale, O. B. (2012). Developing Remote Labs for Challenged Educational Environments. In A. Azad, M. Auer, & V. Harward (Eds.), Internet Accessible Remote Laboratories: Scalable E-Learning Tools for Engineering and Science Disciplines (pp. 432-452). Doi:10.4018/978-1-61350-186-3.ch022 [2] Machotka, J., Nedic, Z., Nafalski, A. & Göl, Ö. (2010). Collaboration in the remote laboratory NetLab. 1st WIETE Annual Conference on Engineering and Technology Education, Pattaya, Thailand, 22-25 February. http://www.wiete.com.au/ conferences/1st_wiete/6-20-Machotka.pdf [3] Jiwaji, A., Hardison, J., Ayodele, K., Tickodri-Togboa, S., Mwambela, A., Harward, J., . . . Gikandi, S. (2009). Collaborative Development of Remote Electonics Laboratories: The ELVIS iLab. ASEE, (pp. AC 2009-1806). Austin, Texas, USA. [4] From http://soshable.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/ Collaboration.jpg [5] From MIT-OAU-GTUC proposal Creating an Internet-Based Commons for Engineering Education in West Africa
Phone: +234 (0) 813 5155743; Email:
[email protected]; Website: http://scholar.oauife.edu.ng/lkehinde; http://ilab.oauife.edu.ng;
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