Sharing online laboratories and their components - a new learning experience

1
Sharing online laboratories and their
components- a new learning experience

• K. Jeppson, P. Lundgren, J. del Alamo, J.
  Hardison, D. Zych
• Chalmers University of Technology Massachussetts
  Institute of Technology
• Solid State Electronics Laboratory Cambridge,
  MA, USA
• Göteborg, Sweden

2
Sharing online laboratories

• Experiences from using MIT WebLab in large
  classes (350 students)
• What are critical issues for successful sharing?
• How do students perceive, relate to and use this
  tool?
• How do we design courses to benefit from the
  resources of shared online laboratories?

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So what is WebLab?

• A remote laboratory is ...
• a cost effective way of opening up the laboratory
  hall for measurements 24 hours a day
• a cost effective way of making state-of-the-art
  devices available to students
• a measurement tool organized to simplify data
  aquisition and to minimize time spent on
  practical details
• more specific, WebLab is an online remote
  laboratory setup for I-V characterisation of
  MOSFETs

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WebLab graphical interface
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Critical issues for sharing

• Lecturer must have opportunity to set course
  focus so that resources offered by the online
  laboratory can be fully utilized and appreciated
• Good and fast communication between host and user
  site when system goes down or device is broken
• Simple and self-instructive graphical interface
• Easy access no waiting time
• Dependable the system must be accessible
  whenever students have planned their measurement
  session

6
Critical issues for sharing

• adding online laboratory exercises to courses
  previously without hands-on exercises is one
  thing
• ...but successfully replacing traditional
  on-campus laboratory exercises with remote ones
  online is quite another
• The on-campus and the remote laboratories are two
  qualitatively quite different learning tools -
  just as listening to a lecturer is something else
  than reading a book

7
Can shared online laboratories help create a
competitive learning environment?

• We choose to change a traditional closed-task
  laboratory assignment to an open task where
  students were expected to plan measurements
  themselves and to find important device
  parameters to study
• Exploring device properties and how to model them
  must be an integrated part of the course

8
Measurement task

• The objective of using WebLab became an
• issue of moving student focus
• from handling instruments for collecting data
• to analysing (readily available) data by
  comparing experimental data to models
• Measurement results expected to be presented
  orally

9
An important measure of success is the impact on
student learning (in relation to the teaching
costs)

• Student time spent on subject
• Student attitude towards subject
• Student focus within subject
• Student learning outcome

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When did students login to WebLab?
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Positive comments on WebLab

• Access (43)
• You can decide for yourself when to do the
  laboratory exercise!
• means less stress!
• gives opportunity to see how different settings
  affect results
• offers flexibility you can work from home at
  your own pace
• Interface (19)
• Clear graphs!
• Real devices (16)
• You get a feeling for realistic values
• Repeated use (15)
• Measure one day think a bit then measure
  again!
• Methodology (9)
• focus is on assignment, not on instrumentation
  or wiring
• avoids many practical problems

12
What students thought about WebLab
Accessibility and Educational value ratings
not correlated
13
Technical Problems

• The use of WebLab in undergraduate courses at
  Chalmers was the largest and most ambitious
  deployment of WebLab to date
• This was bound to result in identification of new
  bugs and problems not seen before

14
Peak performance

• On February 25, 2003 between noon and 1 PM EST
  WebLab performed 134 characterization experiments
  in one hour on average that means one
  experiment every 27 seconds
• This was a 35 increase over previous WebLab
  record

15
Two types of technical problems

• A handful of system blackouts during which WebLab
  was unavailable for measurements due to
  improper resource allocation setting in web
  server
• System returned error message in response to
  valid experimental request problem was
  eliminated by increasing time-out settings of the
  device driver

16
Negative comments on WebLab

• System instabilities (35)
• WebLab performs poorly at first web site is
  not available, then it keeps on crashing
• Supervision (30)
• WebLab is difficult to handle much to learn
  and no instructors
• Time consumption (17)
• It takes TOO MUCH TIME!
• Reliability (16)
• Quite a few bugs in new graphical interface
• Speed
• WebLab is slow

17
Negative impacts on students

• At Chalmers students worked in groups while at
  MIT assignments were of individual nature more
  difficult for group to re-schedule when WebLab
  was down gtgt frustration project delay
• Time zone differences even trivial problems
  with WebLab took long time to correct since MIT
  staff was off duty

18
Improvements needed
(according to student opinion)

• More powerful server to handle heavy traffic
• I/V range limits to prevent device breakdown
• Measurement examples available online
• Options to save graphs directly
• Simplified data export to Excel and/or Matlab

19
WebLab vs hands-on

• Lucidity and tangibility are important
• Provides practical device experience...
• ...but gives no instrumentation experience
• However, avoids hazzle with boring instruments
• A real lab is better because supervisor is
  available and topic is easier to grasp

20
Video evaluation
21
Conclusions

• It is not trivial to design a course that fully
  benefits from the resources of shared online
  laboratories
• Online laboratories are not simply replacements
  for traditional hands on laboratories
• The most important concern from the students
  point of view is that of accessibility
• On the negative side, lack of supervision when
  stuck on trivial matters is very frustrating for
  many students

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Conclusions

• A successful implementation should carefully
  address the topics of how assignment is
  organized, where supervision is available, and
  maybe supply a list of FAQs and some measurement
  setup examples
• Nevertheless, WebLab motivated students to
  undertake more advanced data analysis than before
• Over all, WebLab was received positively in the
  introductory (second year) microelectronic device
  course