In this framework, modern information technology based on the Internet is rapidly being adopted ... the reach of unique programs beyond the local campus through distance .... systems can actually be tracked back to a master-slave teleoperator .... Mellon University, http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~stancil/virtual-lab/virtual-lab.html.
Remote Experimentation - One Building Block in Online Engineering Education Sven K. Esche Stevens Institute of Technology
Abstract Currently, engineering education is undergoing significant structural changes worldwide. The rapidly changing technological landscape forces educators to constantly reassess the content of engineering curricula in the context of emerging fields and with a multidisciplinary focus. In this process, it is necessary to devise, implement and evaluate innovative pedagogical approaches for the incorporation of these novel subjects into the educational programs without compromising the cultivation of the traditional skills. In this framework, modern information technology based on the Internet is rapidly being adopted in engineering education as a tool for enhancing the educational experience of students residing on campus as well as to expand the reach of unique programs beyond the local campus through distance learning. Stevens Institute of Technology is currently in a dynamic phase of transforming all its educational offerings. It has recently adopted a new undergraduate engineering curriculum with both a design spine and a laboratory experience propagating through the entire educational program. A student laboratory that is founded on Internet-based, remotely accessible experimental setups was developed and implemented. In this approach, the students’ experimental experience is greatly expanded by allowing them to not only use the experimental facilities in the traditional on-site fashion but also to remotely access the computer controlled laboratory setup of interest through the Internet, thus making the laboratories available at anytime from anywhere. This paper presents an initial assessment of the experiences gained from the implementation of the remotely accessible laboratory into a sophomorelevel core course on dynamical systems and a junior-year elective course on mechanisms and machine dynamics. In addition, it analyzes the advantages and shortcomings of such remote laboratories. Introduction Stevens Institute of Technology is a private technological university, which recently implemented a new undergraduate engineering curriculum. This curriculum is designed to reflect the nationwide trend towards enhancement of traditional lecture-based courses with a significant design thread and a comprehensive laboratory experience that propagates through the entire undergraduate educational
Proceedings of the 2002 ASEE/SEFI/TUB Colloquium Copyright 2002, American Society for Engineering Education
program. In the course of the curriculum development and implementation, it became increasingly apparent that the incorporation of design and laboratory components into all engineering courses places significant strains on the spatial, temporal and fiscal resources of the institute. Therefore, creative concepts for the implementation of affordable integrated experimental and design laboratories had to be devised, which are suitable for the accommodation of large student enrollment without compromising the intended educational objectives. Stevens has been an early adopter of computers. Today, all undergraduate students own a laptop with an extensive software package, and the campus has modern computer facilities and fully networked dormitories and classrooms. This excellent information technology infrastructure and the superb computer savvy of the student body at Stevens were identified as strong assets in the development of innovative laboratory facilities that leverage the available resources. In this context, a student laboratory approach that is founded on Internet-based, remotely accessible experimental setups was proposed1 and subsequently funded partially by the National Science Foundation (NSF).2,3 As a first pilot project, this approach was implemented in a laboratory on dynamical systems.4,5,6 Alternative Laboratory Approaches Higher education in general and engineering education in particular are currently undergoing significant structural changes worldwide. Educators are forced to constantly reassess the content of existing engineering curricula in the context of emerging fields (e.g., biotechnology, information technology, nanotechnology) and with a multidisciplinary focus (e.g., mechatronics, systems engineering). There is a continuous need to devise, implement and evaluate innovative pedagogical approaches for the incorporation of these novel subjects into the educational programs. In this context, the vital importance of educational laboratories is widely recognized by all constituents of academia. Experimental demonstrations and student experiments contribute to the students' motivation for learning and strengthen their understanding of the abstract concepts and theories taught in the traditional lecture setting, and coping with the experimental imperfections that usually are not reflected in the textbooks is an essential part of the educational experience.7 The setup found in traditional educational laboratories typically involves some form of preparatory instruction, a brief student performance assessment, the hands-on experimental work itself, and the final data analysis and post-processing followed by reporting of the experimental findings. This laboratory approach exhibits a number of shortcomings relating to teaching efficiency, feasibility, safety, accessibility, and affordability. It can be argued that the conventional, temporally and spatially closed educational laboratory setup, where students first spend contiguous time on-site in the laboratory and follow up outside of the laboratory hours by writing a report, is not the format that is most conducive to learning. Instead it is pedagogically advantageous to conduct open laboratories where students can return later at their personal discretion and convenience to repeat and refine their experiments as required.
Proceedings of the 2002 ASEE/SEFI/TUB Colloquium Copyright 2002, American Society for Engineering Education
Today, limited spatial and temporal accessibility and inadequate affordability probably represent the most stringent impediments to traditional educational laboratories. Especially for sophisticated and therefore usually costly experimental equipment, only a very small number of students can perform the experiment concurrently since the budgetary constraints encountered by most educational institutions limit the possibility of duplicating experimental setups. As a consequence, the time allotted per student is usually minimized and the students do not get as much direct contact with the laboratory equipment as would be desirable from a pedagogical viewpoint. In fact, depending on the particular educational subject, providing an experimental complement to the lecture in the form of experimental demonstrations by the instructor or active student experiments might not be feasible at all. For example it would be impractical at most educational institutions to expose a large number of students to the experience of observing first hand the usage of high-cost equipment such as a clean room in a microelectronics manufacturing facility, a scanning electron microscope, a wind tunnel, or fiber-optics equipment. Similarly, it might prove inefficient from a time standpoint or entirely logistically impossible to take a class of several dozens of students to a laboratory facility elsewhere on campus just for a short experimental demonstration during the lecture period. Finally, safety concerns for both students and experimental equipment are highly likely to prevent traditional student experimentation with hazardous substances or with potentially dangerous equipment. Nowadays, modern information technologies such as the Internet are profoundly impacting literally all spheres of society. Distance learning has emerged as a new trend, which is rapidly spreading both nationwide and internationally as a result of the constantly improving capabilities and relentlessly falling hardware costs. Today's students are highly accustomed to using computer tools in the educational process, and an ever increasing number of engineering and science educators are taking advantage of the Internet in order to distribute course materials, offer supplementary and background information, and provide a means for student communication and multimedia student presentations In the context of educational laboratories, multimedia tools also provide an excellent means for preparatory instruction that enhances student interest for the experiments. With the advent of the Internet and its rapidly spreading adoption in almost all spheres of society, remotely accessible student laboratory facilities have become feasible and are increasingly gaining popularity. The underlying fundamental promise of such Internet-based laboratory approaches lies in the students’ ability to connect to the computer controlled laboratory setup of interest at anytime from anywhere, thus sharing the existing limited resources in a more efficient manner than would be possible with the traditional on-site laboratory approach. The general concept of remotely controlled devices has a long-standing history. The roots of such systems can actually be tracked back to a master-slave teleoperator developed at Argonne National Laboratory in 1954.8 Even the idea of sharing student laboratory facilities remotely by using modern communication technology is not new. A remotely accessible control systems laboratory based on networked engineering workstations, which enable the gathering of data and their transfer to another
Proceedings of the 2002 ASEE/SEFI/TUB Colloquium Copyright 2002, American Society for Engineering Education
computer for further experimentation and processing, was proposed as early as 1991.9 More recent developments include for example a low-cost system to control microcontrollers over a touch-tone phone,10 a remotely accessible real time manufacturing automation laboratory,11 a system architecture for remote experimentation with power electronic devices,12 a simulation-based method for mitigating the impact of temporary network overloading on real-time remote experiments13 as well as a variety of similar implementations of remotely operated experimental setups.14-21 Multi-user Multi-device Remote Laboratory Facility An Internet-based remote-access student laboratory was recently developed, implemented and piloted at Stevens. In this implementation, the experimental equipment can be used in the traditional on-site fashion or it can be accessed remotely through the Internet at anytime from anywhere.22 This approach allows for both the direct contact with the computer-controlled laboratory setup of interest with the students present in the laboratory facility as well as the remote interaction by the students and teachers from other locations such as the dormitory or lecture hall as shown in Figure 1. In addition, the experimental facilities can be shared with other educational institutions such as high schools.
Figure 1: Setup of an Internet-based remote-access interactive laboratory
The remote laboratory described here takes full advantage of the existing communication infrastructure at Stevens. It is based on a client-server network architecture. This approach enables the concurrent
Proceedings of the 2002 ASEE/SEFI/TUB Colloquium Copyright 2002, American Society for Engineering Education
execution of multiple experiments using separate experimental setups while experiments that require the same setup are queued and executed in the order of the incoming requests. The laboratory is complemented by a course website that was implemented using WebCT™ and provides access to all preparatory instructional materials. Furthermore, Internet-based communication tools such as e-mail and discussion groups are integrated into this course website in order to enable team-based learning activities for students that are exposed to spatial and temporal constraints in their study techniques, and WebCT-based testing and self-assessment tools for the students can be provided. So far, the following four experimental setups for dynamical systems have been implemented: a mechanical vibration system, a duct acoustic system, various electrical systems and a liquid-level system. Photographs of these systems are shown in Figure 2.
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
Figure 2: Currently implemented remote systems: (a) one-degree-of-freedom mechanical vibration setup, (b) muffler system with adjustable expansion chamber and baffle, (c) electrical system, (d) liquidlevel system
Proceedings of the 2002 ASEE/SEFI/TUB Colloquium Copyright 2002, American Society for Engineering Education
The experimental setup for mechanical vibrations is actuated electro-magnetically. It was designed inhouse in a modular fashion, which allows straightforward extension to multiple degrees of freedom. A custom-designed simplified muffler with adjustable expansion chamber and baffle was selected as a typical representative of a duct acoustic system. Both the electrical systems based on operational amplifiers and the liquid-level system were implemented using mainly off-the-shelve components. In the described laboratory approach, the experimental experience of the students is significantly expanded by allowing them to not only use the experimental facilities in the traditional on-site fashion but also to remotely access the computer controlled laboratory setup of interest through the Internet. This approach offers numerous benefits to the various stakeholders in the laboratory education process as summarized in Table 1. Table 1: Benefits of remotely accessible experiments to stakeholders in laboratory education Students
Instructors
• students can be exposed to a • are enabled and encouraged more comprehensive to include demonstrations of experimental experience laboratory experiments into their lectures • asynchronous learning is encouraged, which is especially suited for nontraditional, commuting parttime students • student self-learning is promoted • student self-assessment and feedback can be integrated
Institutions • distance learning offerings become more attractive through an experimental component
• are provided with a tool to • strains on laboratory class monitor the remote usage of schedules, equipment budgets the experimental setups and to and personnel are alleviated track student performance • through appropriate input • gain additional flexibility for screening, an inherently safe tailoring experiments (e.g., experimental environment can challenge problems) be created thus avoiding student accidents and equipment damage
While offering these important benefits, the described remote laboratory approach also exhibits some drawbacks. In contrast to a laboratory relying exclusively on the remote execution of all experiments, Stevens applies a hybrid on-site / remote approach, which takes into consideration the fact that most people with whom a fully remote laboratory approach was discussed opined that direct hands-on student interaction with the experimental equipment is of absolutely paramount importance for the educational effectiveness of the experimental experience. A second concern that was voiced repeatedly relates to the perceived difficulties in enforcing the independence of remotely performed student work. While at other institutions this might certainly pose a rather challenging problem without an obvious
Proceedings of the 2002 ASEE/SEFI/TUB Colloquium Copyright 2002, American Society for Engineering Education
solution, at Stevens there exists a long-standing honor code that eliminates the need for student proctoring by the instructors entirely. The main disadvantage from the educational institution’s standpoint when comparing remotely accessible laboratory setups with traditional ones is the significant investment in the up-front time and effort required in their development, implementation and testing. This is attributable to the substantial logistical problems that need to be addressed in order for a remotely operated system to be capable of properly handling task scheduling, request conflict resolution, and equipment and network failures. The implementation of this remote experimentation facility at Stevens has sparked considerable excitement amongst the faculty, staff and students involved in the development, building and testing of the experimental setups. The remote laboratory approach was piloted in a sophomore-level course on dynamical systems and in a junior-level course on machine dynamics and mechanisms. In both courses, student feedback was solicited through personal discussions of the author with individual students and questionnaires distributed to the entire class.23 The students were asked to comment on various aspects of the general approach of remote experimentation and to provide their personal opinions on the specific implementation of the approach at Stevens. The resulting student responses have been overwhelmingly positive and very encouraging for further extension of this approach to other courses. In addition, the student performance in conducting the remote experiments was very similar to that encountered in previous years where the experiments were performed in the traditional on-site fashion. Based on the overall success of the pilot implementation, the development of additional remotely accessible experimental setups for other dynamical systems in electrical, civil, and chemical engineering is presently underway, and the propagation of the remote laboratory approach to other educational laboratories at Stevens is intended. Furthermore, in an effort to assist K-12 teachers in enhancing science instruction, it is planned to tailor a subset of the remote experiments to the needs of high school students. Summary An Internet-based approach to laboratory instruction is presented in this paper. This approach allows both the on-site student contact with the computer-controlled laboratory setup of interest and subsequent student interaction with the experimental devices from remote locations. This approach enables and encourages instructors to include demonstrations of sophisticated laboratory experiments into their lectures, and it also forms the basis for integrating experimentation into distance learning offerings. The educational benefits of the proposed laboratory implementation are that more students can be exposed to comprehensive experimental experiences, asynchronous student learning is supported, and self-learning of the students is promoted. In addition, it releases some of the spatial, temporal, and fiscal strains that the traditional on-site laboratory approach imposes on educational institutions. The successful piloting of the remote laboratory approach has motivated plans for its future propagation into other courses at Stevens.
Proceedings of the 2002 ASEE/SEFI/TUB Colloquium Copyright 2002, American Society for Engineering Education
Acknowledgements The development of the presented remote laboratory was partially funded by the NSF through Award #9851039. This financial support is gratefully acknowledged. The collaborative efforts of Dr. M. Tsatsanis and Dr. M. G. Prasad and the countless inspiring discussions on the subject with Dr. C. Chassapis are very much appreciated. Furthermore, it should not go unmentioned that the implementation of this remote laboratory would not have been possible without the creative and diligent hardware and software development work of Mr. D. J. Hromin and the vast design and manufacturing expertise of Mr. Jan Nazalewicz and his colleagues in the Stevens Department of Engineering Services.
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Esche, S. K. & Chassapis, C. (1998). An Internet-based remote-access approach to undergraduate laboratory education. Proceedings of the 1998 Fall Regional Conference of the Middle Atlantic Section of ASEE, pp. 108113. Esche, S. K. (PI), Tsatsanis, M. (Co-PI) & Prasad, M. G. (Co-PI) (1998). Development of a remotely accessible dynamical systems laboratory for undergraduate teaching. NSF-ILI Award #9851039. Esche, S. K. (PI) & Hromin, D. J. (Undergraduate Student) (1999). Optimization of remote experiments for network requirements & performance analysis of client-server remote-experimentation laboratory. REU Supplement to NSF-ILI Award #9851039. Esche, S. K., Prasad, M. G. & Chassapis, C. (2000). A remotely accessible laboratory approach to undergraduate education. Proceedings of the 2000 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Session 3220. Esche, S. K. & Hromin, D. J. (2000). An open approach to undergraduate laboratories. Proceedings of the 2000 Fall Regional Conference of the Middle Atlantic Section of ASEE. Esche, S. K. & Hromin, D. J. (2001). Expanding the undergraduate laboratory experience using Web technology. Proceedings of the 2001 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Session 3220. Skormin, V. & Nikulin, V. (2001). Engineering laboratory accessible via the Internet. Proceedings of the 2001 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Session 1526. Malinowski, A., Dahlstrom, J., Cortez, P. F., Dempsey, G. & Mattus, C. (2000). Web-based remote active presence. Proceedings of the 2000 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Session 3232. Aburdene, M. F., Mastascusa, E. J. & Massengale, R. (1991). A proposal for a remotely shared control systems laboratory. Proceedings of the ASEE 1991 Frontiers in Education Conference, Session 24A3, pp. 589-592. Chen, C. & Crotty, J. (2000). Remote control of microcontrollers with a telephone. Proceedings of the 2000 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Session 1647. Gurocak, H. (2000). Initial steps towards distance delivery of a manufacturing automation laboratory course by combining the Internet and an interactive TV system. Proceedings of the 2000 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Session 2663. Grinberg, I. (2000). Integrated electrical laboratory with Internet-based distance learning capabilities. Proceedings of the 2000 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Session 1633. Salzmann, C., Gillet, D., Latchman, H. A. & Crisalle, O. D. (1999). On-line engineering laboratories: real-time control over the Internet. Proceedings of the 1999 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Session 2532. Automated Internet Measurement Laboratory, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: http://nina.ecse.rpi.edu/shur/remote/ Bugscope, University of Illinois at Urbana: http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/
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16 Control Systems Lab, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga: http://chem.engr.utc.edu/Webres/Stations/controlslab.html 17 e-Lab, City University of New York, http://www.mission-technology.com/nsfrobot/ 18 i-Lab, MIT, http://i-lab.mit.edu/ 19 Measurement Request Broker, University of Illinois at Chicago, http://iel.isl.uic.edu/marble/ 20 ITL OnLine Lab, University of Colorado at Boulder: http://bench.colorado.edu/ 21 The Virtual Lab, Carnegie Mellon University, http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~stancil/virtual-lab/virtual-lab.html 22 Website of Remote Dynamical Systems Laboratory at URL http://dynamics.soe.stevens-tech.edu/ 23 Esche, S. K. (2001). Feedback form for remote laboratory. E255 Dynamical Systems, Spring 2001, ME358 Machine Dynamics and Mechanisms, Spring 2001, Summer I 2001, Fall 2001, Spring 2002, Summer I 2002.
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