Workshops

Workshop 1

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Remote Laboratories as Learning Objects - Building and Publishing of Labs on the LiLa Portal


Workshop organisers: Thomas Richter, David Boehringer
 University of Stuttgart, LiLa Consortium



Abstract

The topic of this workshop is to provide background information on the LiLa ("Library of Labs") project of the EC, specifically its portal infrastructure, and will provide knowledge how to import experiments from this portal into learning management systems, and how to prepare experiments for publication.


Within the workshop, participants will learn how to prepare, build and publish "LiLa Learning Objects", specially crafted "SCO"s in the SCORM-sense, and how to upload them on the LiLa portal. Participants will learn how to import and download experiments from LiLa, and how to deploy them in learning management systems (e.g. Ilias or moodle). An introduction into the technology is provided.


Participants should have some background in HTML and should bring a laptop with an ASCII editor and a ZIP utility (Linux "zip" or "winzip"). Ideally, participants already have some background on SCORM, though basics will be provided in the workshop, and should provide internet access to some remote experiments build by them already in existence..


The instructors are the coordinator and integration manager of the European "Library of Labs" project whose goal is to establish a network of commonly shared remotely controlled experiments and simulations.

 

The workshop is planned as a half-day session, including presentations and work-phases on the machines of the participants.


Contacts: richter@rus.uni-stuttgart.deand boehringer@rus.uni-stuttgart.de

Workshop 2


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 Download pdf documents A and B

Remote Experiments in Natural

Sciences Education by Integrated

e-Learning


Workshop organisers: Franz Schauer, Miroslava Ozvoldova
 Faculty of Informatics, Tomas Bata University in Zlin, Czech Republic and Faculty of Education, Trnava University in Trnava , Slovak Republic


A.

Integrated e-Learning with remote experiments in the era of networking

F.Schauer1,2

1Tomas Bata University in Zlin, Faculty of Applied Informatics, Zlin, Czech Republic
2University of Trnava, Faculty of Education, Department of Physics, Trnava, Slovak Republic


Key words: Integrated e-Learning, remote experimentation, e-simulations, e-textbooks, e-laboratory studio

Information communication technologies have made it possible to introduce Integrated e-Learning (INTe-L) as a new strategy of education of physics for engineering education based on the method sciences used for the cognition of the Real world. It is based on the e-laboratory with remote experiments across the Internet, e-simulations and e-textbook. Its main features are the observations of real world phenomena, possibly materialized in data and their evaluation, search for rele-vant information, its classification and storing. Only then come the explanation and the mathematical formalism of gener-alized laws and their consequences. The indispensable quality of this method is the active part the student has to take in the teaching process both in lessons, seminars and laboratory exercises, but also his/her substantially increased activity in form of projects, search for information, presentations etc. In the paper, the INTe-L strategy is presented and general and pedagogical reasons for its introduction are given. The experience with INTe-L on teaching units Electromagnetic Induc-tion, Oscillations, Photovoltaics and Electrochemistry is presented and discussed. We present the outlines of the existing and planned remote laboratory system with data transfer using Internet School Experimental System (ISES) as hardware and ISES WEB Control kit as software . For this purpose, the LMS system Moodle turned out to be a highly effective means of organization of physics courses.


Franz Schauer received the M.S. degree in Electronics from the Brno University of Technology in 1963 and his Ph.D. degree in Solid State Physics from Prague University of Technology in 1978. In 1982 he was appointed Associate Professor and in 1988 Professor in Condensed Matter Physics at the Technical Academy in Brno. In 1993-2002 he was with the Faculty of Chemistry, Brno University of Technology and since then he has been with the Polymer Centre of the Faculty of Technology, Tomas Bata University in Zlin. His main activities are molecular electronics, computer assisted experiments, and e-learning in physics teaching.

Contact: fschauer@ft.utb.cz

B.

Integrated e-Learning for Freshmen of Engineering Education

M. Ozvoldova1,2

1University of Trnava, Faculty of Education, Department of Physics, Trnava, Slovak Republic

2Tomas Bata University in Zlin, Faculty of Applied Informatics, Zlin, Czech Republic
 

Key words: Integrated e-Learning, distance education, freshmen education, remote and virtual laboratories


Presentation gives practical application of Integrated e-Learning (INTe-L) a new strategy of education, based on recent massive progress in Information communication technologies, and exclusively on the exploratory function of physics along the lines sciences use. Here a special function play globally shared remote experimentation of real world via Inter-net and virtual interactive simulations. We demonstrate on the chapter Mechanics, as a part of the introductory course of physics for freshmen, the utilisation of the INTe-L strategy. The first experience with application for students of the Fac-ulty of Applied Informatics, Tomas Bata University in Zlin and the Faculty of Education, Trnava University are presented, where the subject matter is delivered by Learning Management System - LMS (Moodle) - in successions that start by a remote or virtual experiment, with subsequent questions on observed phenomena, followed by the corresponding theory. The level of acquired knowledge is feed backed by the randomly generated tests and exercises.

The first experience with the INTe-L strategy application are presented.

 

Miroslava Ožvoldová received her M.S. degrees in Physics from Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia, in 1973, and 1981 a Ph.D. Physics-Mathematics Science. In 1992 she was appointed Associate Professor, and in 2002 Extraord. Professor at the Faculty of Materials Science and Technology in Trnava, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava. Since 2003 she has been active at the University of Trnava, Faculty of Education. Since 2008 she is also with Faculty of Informatics, Tomas Bata University in Zlin. Her main activities are optical properties of chalcogenide and heavy metal optonic glasses and e-learning in Physics teaching. (e-m: mozvoldo@truni.sk ).


Contact: mozvoldo@truni.sk


Workshop 3

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BLEKINGE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY DEPT. OF ELECTRICAL ENINGEERING
 

 How to open a local electronics laboratory for remote access

A workshop on the VISIR Open Laboratory Platform and an invitation to join the VISIR Community

A local instructional laboratory for electrical experiments can be opened for remote ac-cess using the VISIR Open Laboratory Platform. A VISIR Open Laboratory is a server/client application enabling students to perform physical electrical experiments within limits set by the teacher over the internet using a web browser 24/7. Virtual front panels and a virtual breadboard displayed on the client PCs are used to control the physical equipment connected to the server. The server is an online workbench giving the students the impression that they are working in a real laboratory. Such a workbench supplements a local laboratory equipped with workbenches comprising oscilloscope, function generator, multi-meter, triple power supply, and a solderless breadboard.

Apart from Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden, where the platform has been created three universities, University of Deusto in Spain, FH Campus Wien in Austria, and Carinthia University of Applied Sciences in Austria have already implemented rep-licas of the online workbench at BTH and use them in their regular education. Other universities are ready to start. It is easy for teachers to introduce their own existing labo-ratory exercises. A modem connection and a web browser with Flash player are suffi-cient for the student.

The software required to set up such a workbench has been published under a GNU GPL licence. Apart from a standard PC the hardware required to join the VISIR Com-munity and implement an online workbench is a PXI chassis containing instruments and a switching matrix for circuit wiring. The components to be used by the students are to be provided by the teachers and are installed in the matrix. Universities, schools and other teaching organizations are invited to participate and open their local laboratories for remote access in order to be able to produce engineers with a solid and documented laboratory experience but without significantly increased cost per student.

This workshop is divided into four parts:


Contact: ingvar.gustavsson@bth.se

Workshop 4

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EUREMOTE II Preparation Workshop
 

Workshop organiser:Reinhard Langmann 


Duesseldorf University of Applied Sciences / Process Informatics Lab / Duesseldorf, Germany

 

The workshop deals with the preparation of the EU project proposal European Centre of Remote Technologie (EUREMOTE) in the work programme CAPACITIES/Part 1: Re-search infrastructures.
 

The aim of the planned project is to construct a virtual research community including a corre-sponding e-infrastructure (European Centre for Remote Technology) by means of which the growing European and global RT community from many science and engineering disciplines can communicate, collaborate on research projects and provide training services for the scien-tific community, higher-education and industry. By deploying a new generation of a highly developed global infrastructure that incorporates national RT initiatives, the EUREMOTE community intends to enable European researchers from different RT areas to collaborate over a broad spectrum. The community should utilise synergies and thus enable multidiscipli-nary RT projects. Thus, intelligent RT processes for signal analysis of medical data (e-health) may also be of interest for the remote diagnosis of machine and system data.


The EUREMOTE I project proposal submitted first time in November 2009 in the call INFRA-2010-1.2.3: Virtual Research Communities. The project consortium consists of 16 partners from 13 countries. In the evaluation process the project didn’t reach the required threshold of 10 points and got only 9.5 points. In the result the EUREMOTE I project propos-al was rejected by the EU commission.


Now the project consortium intends to submit a revised EUREMOTE proposal (EUREMOTE II) in the next call (in November 2010) and the objective of the workshop is to discuss this new EUREMOTE II project proposal.


The workshop is open for all participants of the REV 2010 and the project consortium of EUREMOTE is also open for new interested project partners.



 Agenda:

1. Short presentation of the EUREMOTE I proposal

 

2. Evaluation report of the EU commission

 

3. Discussion of the evaluation report

 

4. Conclusions and suggestions for the revision of the EUREMOTE proposal as a new EUREMOTE II project proposal

 

5. Discussion of the next tasks and further procedure

 

Duration oth the workshop: 3 hours


Contact: R.Langmann@t-online.de