Spreading Remote Labs Usage: a System, a Community, a Federation

GUSTAVO ALVES; ANA PAVANI; MARÍA ISABEL POZZO

Vila Real

Congreso; 2nd International Conference of the Portuguese Society for Engineering Education; 2016

Sociedad Portuguesa de Enseñanza de la ingeniería

Experiments have been at the heart of scientificdevelopment and education for centuries. From the outburst ofInformation and Communication Technologies, virtual andremote labs have added to hands-on labs a new conception ofpractical experience, especially in Science, Technology,Engineering and Mathematics education. This paper aims atdescribing the features of a remote lab named VirtualInstruments System in Reality, embedded in a community ofpractice and forming the spearhead of a federation of remotelabs. More particularly, it discusses the advantages anddisadvantages of remote labs over virtual labs as regards toscalability constraints and development and maintenance costs.Finally, it describes an actual implementation in an internationalcommunity of practice of engineering schools forming theembryo of a first world wide federation of Virtual InstrumentsSystem in Reality nodes, under the framework of a projectfunded by the Erasmus+ Program.