Remote laboratories for electronics and new steps in learning process integration

Abstract

Universities and educational organizations or institutions, when designing any electronics course, trust in experimentation through laboratory practices in order to build successful cross-curricular capabilities and capacities. In electronics courses there is a need to have practical experiences, the benefits of electronics laboratory practices are widely known for professionals and necessary for any person who seeks for a broad comprehension of the real-time performance beyond the ideal modelling. Therefore, when designing any electronics course, the laboratory practices are one of the pillars on which the learning is established. Distance education has become widespread in the last decade and has fostered lifelong learning and continuing education patterns, allowing access to learning resources at any time and from everywhere. It has been possible thanks to the internet development and technologies associated with learning tools for a new teaching pedagogy. To support life-long learning and students' autonomous learning activities, remote experimentation has become a challenge in electronics courses; rather, the way the universities and educational organizations or institutions deliver remote experimentation to students in distance learning environments, has become a challenge. Nowadays, there is an extensive variety for providing theoretical contents in distance learning (videos, documents, tutorials, scaffolding activities, peer-to-peer reviews, forums, etc.) to students. These tools, by an efficiently and appropriate selection from professors and use from students, can complement or replace successfully in-person education, even they can reach some aspects that in-person education cannot achieve. Unfortunately, practical issues are not as developed as theoretical ones are. A first approach to this problem is clearly the use of simulators and virtual labs. Although, they are still a bit far from providing to student the real performance and features of equipment under real-life operation conditions. The major challenge is the provision of laboratory working online along with the theoretical contents in a massive context.