Labs-on-the-web: a multidisciplinary project to evaluate the pedagogic effectiveness of on-line-labs

Abstract

On-line labs provide 24x7 access to real or virtual workbenches, enabling the students to complete, rehearse or repeat practical assignments outside the physical space of the campus labs. Many on-line experiments in science and engineering courses have been described in the literature, but there is still room for further work and innovation, both in technical and pedagogical areas. The latter are particularly important and have largely been left aside, since the vast majority of research projects in this area were set up by technical institutions. This paper describes the work and results of the Labs-on-the-web project, a cooperative research effort set up the Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Porto, under the framework and support of the POCI 2010 programme.