Principles for the Design of a Remote Laboratory: a Case Study on Errl

Abstract

Remote laboratories are getting very popular in engineering education programs. However, there are not many studies addressing the requirements and design issues of such laboratories. This paper discusses the results of a study of the requirements for developing a remote Radio Frequency (RF) laboratory for university students. This study draws on the perspectives of the students at the university, department of electrical engineering. The results are based on a research study established by 111 engineering students from France, Germany, Romania and Turkey. It investigates how students would like to use the technical content of a state of the art RF laboratory. The result of this study is also compared with the previous outcomes showing perspectives of the other learner groups of such laboratories; engineers and technicians in the technical colleges on the Radio Frequency (RF) domain. Considering the outcomes developed so far, some principles that need to be considered while designing and developing such a laboratory have been proposed. As a case study the proposed principles are implemented in a remote laboratory project. In this paper, the details of user requirements of such laboratories, the proposed principles and the implementation examples are all provided and discussed. Primarily, the general aim of this study is to guide remote laboratory platform developers towards the most effective design of their platforms. © 2010 IEEE.