An Extensible Architecture for the Integration of Remote and Virtual Laboratories in Public Learning Tools

Abstract

Remote laboratories are software and hardware tools that allow students to remotely access real equipment located in universities. The integration of remote laboratories in Learning Tools (Learning Management Systems, Content Management Systems or Personal Learning Environments) has been achieved to integrate remote laboratories as part of the learning curricula. A cross-institutional initiative called gateway4labs has been created to perform this integration extensible to multiple remote laboratories in multiple learning tools. This contribution focuses on describing this initiative and, in particular, how opening it to public systems (where users do not need to be registered) produces new technical and organizational challenges due to the public availability of labs. Additionally, this contribution shows integrations of systems that were not previously addressed in this initiative, such as PhET or ViSH, as well as a new approach for integrating supported laboratories in external specifications such as the Smart Device one through OpenSocial.

REMLABNET – User Experience and Mixed Reality Continuum

“…On the other hand, we do not aim to cover the needs of more complex and extensive remote laboratory systems that combine multiple disciplinary approaches [7]. We proposed four classes based on user's devices (Table 1 and Figure 1).…”

Spreading remote lab usage a system — A community — A Federation

“…Administrators can define lab and user groups and define roles and offer predefined access types to the online labs and remote experiments. Via special web-services (smart gateways [27]) these systems can be connected to an LMS by single-sign-on, if the LMS supports the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) protocol. The lab owner in every case defines the use policy (timeframes, actual number of users etc.)…”

“…But he accepts, that all (usually identified) users, which are inscribed to the lab group of the federation, to which his lab is connected, have access to his experiments. P. Orduña et al expose the advantages of a federated system [27] concerning the experiments shareability: "once students of a particular institution can access through the Internet to a particular laboratory, it can also be accessed by students of other universities". This advantage is bidirectional through RLMSs in which a federation is established: two institutions providing the same remote lab -or the same practical experiment from a specific remote lab-can balance their clients/users load.…”

Proposta para integração de laboratórios forenses via rede de weblabs.

“…A busca por plataformas em princípio adequadas para derivação rumo a aplicações forenses apontou para os seguintes grupos de pesquisa e produtos: (i) LabConnector: Shara (Labshare) e iLabs (MIT); (ii) Global Online Laboratory Consortium; (iii) iniciativa "gateway4labs", de (ORDUNA et al, 2015), e laboratórios como serviços (LaaS), de (CAMINERO et al, 2014 …”

“…Os pesquisadores de (ORDUNA et al, 2015) propuseram uma arquitetura extensível para a integração de laboratórios remotos e virtuais, com finalidades educacionais.…”