Work in progress: Software for remote laboratories designed with the focus on learners

Abstract

The work presented here has a focus on the software controlling the remote laboratory in the context of pedagogy. This in contrast to the traditional focus when developing remote laboratories, which has been on functional performance as seen from an engineers' perspective: number of functions to perform, similarity to the physical laboratory it should imitate, scheduling of experiment, etc. As the supervisor is removed from the scene in the transition from physical to remote laboratories, the remote laboratory environment must facilitate the student-teacher interaction in a more or less automated manner. A list of requirement for the software controlling the remote laboratory environment has been developed where focus is set on ease of setup, access and readability, integrity of the hardware, protection from misuse, and support for learning. We here present a preliminary report on the implementation of such a system.