The laboratory in your hand Making remote laboratories accesible through mobile devices

Abstract

Within laboratories in Engineering Education students have the chance to do own experiments and by that gain own experiences in their learning processes - means that they are an adequate opportunity to implement experiential and research based learning. Recently finished research projects - e.g. like the PeTEX project done by universities in Dortmund (Germany), Palermo (Italy) and Stockholm (Sweden) - implemented an opportunity to do experiential learning by using real laboratory equipment without being physically in the laboratory but having access via the Internet. A question in this context is, how students can document their learning process and show to others (teachers and/or other students), what they have been doing. Making the whole environment available for mobile devices so that students have access from virtually everywhere and every time is the consequent further development. With this work in progress paper we show what kind of role e-portfolios can play in the learning process and which kind of scenarios are possible using the software on mobile devices. Furthermore, we show that the combination of experiential learning and the use of e-portfolios offer a great potential to promote the learners' creativity. This unique combination of topics is realized within one subtask of the project “ELLI - Excellent Teaching and Learning in Engineering Education” at TU Dortmund University.