Remote Laboratories for Physics Education: A Proposal Toward Interactive Learning for Engineering Students

Abstract

Academic training of professionals, especially in engineering fields, should enable them to reliably interpret their surroundings for informed decision-making. This is crucial for engineering students who continuously quantify and anal-yze system operations. In the current context, where in-person and virtual work blend together thanks to technological advances, professional education must establish flexible alternatives to assimilate phenomenological knowledge without sacrificing essential aspects of real experimentation. Remote laboratories emerge as an alternative to strengthen these aspects through distance learning. This paper presents a proposed and developed functional architecture scheme for remote interaction-based mechanical physics laboratories, allowing the configuration of initial operating conditions, execution of experiments, and data collection for three fundamental physics practices: free fall, Hooke’s law, and parabolic motion. The proposed architecture is scalable under the Internet of Things approach, using the necessary hardware and software elements with user-friendly interaction interfaces, making the developed remote laboratories a viable option for engineering students’ education, without requiring physical presence for their execution.