VISIR deployment in undergraduate engineering practices

Abstract

Practical sessions are the backbone of qualification in engineering education. It leads to a better understanding and allows mastering scientific concepts and theories. The lack of the availability of practical sessions at many universities and institutions owing to the cost and the unavailability of instructors the most of the time caused a significant decline in experimentation in engineering education over the last decades. Recently, with the progress of computer-based learning, remote laboratories have been proven to be the best alternative to the traditional ones, regarding to its low cost and ubiquity. Some universities have already started to deploy remote labs in their practical sessions. This contribution compiles diverse experiences based on the deployment of the remote laboratory, Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality (VISIR), on the practices of undergraduate engineering grades at various universities within the VISIR community. It aims to show the impact of its usage on engineering education concerning the assessments of students and teachers as well.

Remote Laboratory for Online Engineering Education: The RLAB-UOC-FPGA Case Study

“…Nevertheless, more work to improve the satisfaction about its effectiveness as a real lab was suggested. Secondly, in [25], the use of VISIR was presented, showing that it was accepted among the students as a useful tool for practical sessions; however, it was considered a support tool and not as a substitute for real laboratories. Finally, in [26], WebLab-Deusto was analyzed, showing that, in general, the students think that the WebLab-Deusto experiment is a useful learning tool, although more work into immersion and experiment control would improve the results.…”

Fostering Experimental Competences Using Complementary Resources

“…In this study, these subsequent course editions were carried out by either the same teacher or at least one of the teachers was part of the team in all editions (typically the head teacher or a teacher involved in a previous course). The teachers familiarization with the tool is important to trigger students' perception of VISIR utility and their enthusiasm, motivating its usage and improving their satisfaction as reported in previous studies (Alves et al, 2011;Fidalgo et al, 2012;Marques et al, 2014;Tawfik, Sancristobal, Martín, et al, 2012;Tawfik, Sancristobal, Martín, Gil, Pesquera, Losada, et al, 2011).…”

“…BTH research group is still responsible for maintaining and updating the VISIR distribution that is available as open source. Nowadays, VISIR is installed in seventeen different Higher Education Institutions, in twelve different countries (Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Costa Rica, Georgia, Germany, India, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and United States of America) García-Zubía et al, 2020) and it has well served several thousands of students (Salah, Alves, Abdulazeez, Guerreiro, & Gustavsson, 2015;Tawfik, Sancristobal, Martín, Gil, Pesquera, Losada, et al, 2011;Tawfik et al, 2013). But until the end of 2015 civil year, before the blast of the VISIR+ Project (Alves, Fidalgo, et al, 2016), VISIR was installed just in eight HEI in six countries.…”

“…Student's accounts allow to access the experiments of a specific course: select experiments (with a previously defined list of components), select instruments and make a schedule student reservation. Finally, the guest account is a public trail account, that can be accessed by anyone who wants to try VISIR (Tawfik, Sancristobal, Martín, Gil, Pesquera, Losada, et al, 2011).…”

“…All these implementations were based upon VISIR and it was already plenty reported in literature VISIR increased students' confidence in hands-on lab (Fidalgo et al, 2012;Marques et al, 2014;Salah et al, 2015;Tawfik, Sancristobal, Martín, Gil, Pesquera, Losada, et al, 2011). Additionally, when used prior to hands-on lab, in the subsequent hands-on lab classes, students were more at ease, performing less mistakes (the number of blown fuses decreased a lot) and assembling more circuits in a shorter time: VISIR being regarded as a "hands-on facilitator" (Alves et al, 2011;Lima et al, 2019cLima et al, , 2019aLima et al, , 2018Marques et al, 2014).…”