Remote laboratory

Benefits

• Relax time constraints, adapting to pace of each student, if there was insufficient time in lab
• Relax geographical constraints, disregarding the physical locality of the student
• Economies of scale, as sharing labs allows sharing of large fixed costs of traditional buildings
• Improve quality of experiment, as it can be repeated to clarify doubtful measurements in lab
• Improve effectiveness, as student may improve effectiveness of time spent at lab by rehearsal
• Improved safety and security, as no risk of catastrophic failure

• Increasing accessibility to laboratories by a factor of 4 within 3 years, since current lab utilization is less than 10%
• Decrease fixed and variable expenditure by 50%, since faculty budget spends between 15-40% on lab infrastructure and personnel, around $400m per year
• Improve learning objectives and outcomes to support better learning
• Enhance sharing of knowledge, expertise and experience
• Reduce start-up costs of laboratories

Disadvantages

• Lack of hands on trouble shooting and debugging experience.
• Lack of equipment setup experience.

  Future direction

• Online session booking, utilizing a database and online interface
• Authentication to satisfy security requirements
• Desktop, generalized screen for chat, emoticon, time limit, bandwidth limit
• Live lab camera which allows panning, tilting, zooming, showing, hiding, refresh
• Circuit builder
• Function generator
• Digital multimeter
• Oscilloscope

  Related pages

• GOLC
• iLabs
• Labicom
• Labshare
• Lila Project
• Engineering education
• FARLabs