Poster Presentation/Demo Abstract
The iLab Project is dedicated to the proposition that online laboratories – real laboratories accessed through the Internet – can enrich science and engineering education by greatly expanding the range of experiments that the students are exposed to in the course of their education. During this session, we will be demonstrating iLabs in electrical engineering, physics and nuclear engineering.
Statement of the problem or issue
Almost all educators agree that exposure to laboratory experiments is an important part of learning science and a student’s education. In these economic times, hands-on labs are being scaled back or even eliminated from science curriculum. Hands-on laboratories are expensive to run and maintain. Even at institutions where well-equipped laboratories are available, access to them is often limited by staff availability and scheduling conflicts, safety concerns, operating & resource costs required to maintain the lab and the availability of space.
Description of activity, project, solution, and outcome
Online laboratories (iLabs) are experimental facilities that allow students to carry out experiments from anywhere at any time. iLabs is a robust, scalable, open-source infrastructure built on web services that has been developed to provide a unifying software framework that can support access to a wide variety of online laboratories. iLabs effectively address many of the logistical limitations of “hands-on” laboratories (equipment, space, user training, scheduling, safety and staffing constraints). Through iLabs, students can carry out their lab assignments from any location whenever it is convenient for them. Because iLabs are online 24×7, students have significantly more lab time available with greater flexibility of access. Further, as iLabs are all based on a common iLab Shared Architecture, they may be easily shared between institutions.
Importance or relevance to other faculty, staff, students, departments, and programs
Over the past five years, iLabs has become a standard part of upper level course 6 subjects and is now part of the introductory sequence. We are eager to engage with other MIT faculty.
Kirky DeLong – Center for Educational Computing Initiatives (CEC)
Phil Bailey – Center for Educational Computing Initiatives (CECI)
(Presented at MIT Educational Technology Fair 2009)
Topic Area(s)
5. Open educational tools and resources