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Session F2A-1 eComLab: REMOTE LABORATORY ARCHITECTURE FOR RADIO-COMMUNICATIONS

Arsen Melkonyan, Murillo Pontual, Grant Huang, Andreas Gampe, David Akopian Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA arsen.melkonyan@utsa.edu, mpontual@cs.utsa.edu, grant.huang@hotmail.com, agampe@cs.utsa.edu , david.akopian@utsa.edu

Abstract
Todays electrical and computer engineering graduates need marketable skills based on hands-on experimenting with electronic devices. Hands-on experiments help to efficiently digest theoretical concepts and relate those to practical tasks. However, dramatically increasing number of students, the shortage of costly equipment and human resources for laboratory maintenance and assistance decrease the implementation capacity of the hands-on laboratories. With the continued development of information technology the Internet has become a common media to enhance education. Internet-based remote laboratories can resolve many constraints in providing hands-on training as they can be used at flexible time and sharing the same equipment between different students. This article describes a new remote hands-on experimentation laboratory eComLab for experiments in radio modulation, networking and mobile applications. The core components are the remote lab architecture and server management system exploiting various familiar networking media used by modern students, such as chat rooms and video streaming.

Introduction
Over the past decade, with the continued development of information technology the Internet has become a common media to enhance education. Apparently, Internet-based remote laboratories can resolve many constraints in providing hands-on training as they can be used at flexible times and allow sharing the same equipment between different students. Thus they can serve as viable alternatives to the traditional hands-on laboratories. Such labs minimize expenses and will eventually provide limitless access to available experimentation resources. Unfortunately not all hands-on experiments can be implemented in remote settings - only PC-controlled parameters and characteristics can be changed for the studies which constraints the applicability of the concept e.g. in radio-communications. This article describes a remote hands-on experimentation laboratory eComLab being developed at the University of Texas at San Antonio. It includes experiments in modulation, networking and applications. The core components are the remote lab architecture and server management system which are adapted to use various familiar networking media used by modern students, such as chat rooms and video streaming. These labs are being offered as training modules in a
Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference University of Houston Copyright 2011, American Society for Engineering Education

regular radio-communications class, and the paper presents survey results for assessing student satisfaction with the proposed concept. The rest of the article has been further organized as follows. A brief review of several remote laboratory architectures has been done in section 2. Section 3 presents the analysis of hardware based communication systems available in the market. Section 4 explains the eComLab system architectures. Experimental results have been shown in section 5 and the article is concluded in section 6.

Remote Laboratory Architectures


One of the main design challenges in the remote laboratory development is to create an architecture which can support appropriate access to the remote hardware. Generally, the remote laboratories are based on Web based application-hardware architecture. Hardware is the main component which is responsible for physical experiment performance, while software or a Web based application is responsible for hardware (experiment) control. Software passes the orders from the user to the hardware and also visualizes the experiments results.The basic remote laboratory may be a single experiment, with a customized Web based or other application which includes reporting of measurement data or visual feedback from the hardware. A more complicated system may include multiple pieces of equipment, many experiments and users. To illustrate the design of remote laboratory systems, we will consider several known system architectures. The simplest approach, remote desktop, can be used in basic remote laboratory architecture [14]. Remote desktop software allows users to connect directly to the host computer over the Internet. In this case the remote experiment users are actually working on the computer desktop where the experiment control software is installed; typically it is the host computer. The user can connect to the host computer by using specific information about the host computer, which is typically the host computers IP address and preset password. Remote desktop based remote experiment system architecture is shown in Figure 1. Because of this simple architecture these kinds of systems have many limitations. The main limitation is related to multi user experiments. Typically remote desktop software is designed as one-to-one communication, and when many users want to access the same experiment, the first in first out sequencing method is used.

Fig. 1: Remote Desktop Based Experiments System Architecture

Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference University of Houston Copyright 2011, American Society for Engineering Education

UTS is a more sophisticated remote laboratory system architecture, which was developed to provide the ability to manage multiple sets of equipment [4]. A main goal of the UTS was to ensure that all available experiments can be accessed from any remote PC without additional software, including applications control and installation. The UTS architecture is shown in Figure 2. Virtual machines are running on the server, which are connected to the specific equipment. A remote user can log into the system through a web browser, and a sophisticated experiment access system in the server will redirect the user to the desired experiment by connecting to the corresponding virtual machine. The user creates a remote desktop connection to the selected virtual machine and gets permission to run the control application installed in the virtual machine in order to work with hardware. Additionally, the web interface provides the user with real time audio/visual monitoring tools in order to monitor the equipment during experiment. In this architecture the client side needs a Web browser and a remote desktop client in order to be able to use the system.

Fig. 2: The UTS System Architecture

The ReLOAD is another remote laboratory, which allows connection of multiple experiments at multiple locations to the system though central server [5]. The architecture is shown in Fig 3. It has two main components; a central ReLOAD Web server and remote experiment PCs, which are connected to the hardware. The experiments in the ReLOAD system can be accessed through Web based application. The ReLOAD server is a gateway, which administrates and coordinates the user activities in the system. It directs the user to the requested experiment by connecting the user to the corresponding experiment PC according to a complicated user management application, which continuously runs on the server, by using experiment PCs static IP address. Experiment PCs are connected to the hardware, which is controlled using NI LabVIEW software. The experiment PC is in control of running the physical experiment and recording relevant results to a file on the local machine. These results are in digital format, which can be visualized by using the NI LabVIEW software. Experiment PCs are equipped with a Web cam, which can be used for the experiment monitoring or recording. The AIM-lab system is based on client-server architecture. The Server is implemented by using visual C++, which provides the communication between the hardware and the server [6]. Users run a Java based application to establish communication with the server then the server connects the user to the hardware and starts to play an intermittent role between the hardware and the user.
Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference University of Houston Copyright 2011, American Society for Engineering Education

Another client-server architecture based system is Emona net*TIMS. In this system both the client and the server are Java based. Its architecture is similar to AIM-labs architecture [7].

Fig. 3: The ReLOAD System Architecture

Educational Communication Trainers


The role of laboratories in modern technical education is critical and should not be underestimated. It is in laboratories students learn how to apply the theoretical concepts on actual hardware. Over the last decade, the area of wireless communications has come into its own and is poised to become a global technology with the recent arrival of new generations of cellular, wireless local area and wireless sensor networks. As such, today's graduating electrical and computer engineers need marketable skills which are typically developed in classes by experimenting with devices in telecommunication laboratories. Several hardware based systems for education are offered on the market. Table 1 shows concise descriptions of several such systems. EMONA TIMS EMONA TIMS (Telecommunication Instructional Modeling System) Corporation offers several hardware-based educational communication systems, which are highly flexible, and versatile communications trainers that have many instruments needed to complete a set of communications laboratory experiments. The TIMS-301/C System Unit: TIMS-301/C hardware includes two components: the TIMS301/C system unit with its fixed modules in the bottom part of the unit and a 12-slot top part for plug-in modules, and the necessary plug-in modules, which include a broad range of singlefunction building blocks. The fixed modules include master oscillators, buffer amplifiers, frequency and event counters, voltage output, oscilloscope display selectors, headphone amplifier and power supplies. EMONA TIMS also offers a wide range of plug-in modules for different experiments. The basic plug-in modules in association with fixed modules allow the students to perform a wide range of communication experiments [7].

Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference University of Houston Copyright 2011, American Society for Engineering Education

EMONA Telecoms-Trainer (ETT) 202: Also known as DATEx it is designed for ELVIS station from National Instruments (NI). ETT-202 is a trainer board, which plugs into the NI ELVIS platform and can operate under NI LabVIEW. ETT-202 can be used to introduce students to the fundamentals of modern communication theory. The board management and waveform displays and measurements are performed and presented using LabView. User management of the ETT202 board occurs in two different ways. The first is the manual control method; during which student can control the board manually using the knobs and the controllers on it, and the second method is PC control; the full board can be controlled using EMONA DATEx SFPs software. EMONA DATEx SFPs uses the LabVIEW application, which displays the ETT-202 board on the computer display with exact knobs and controllers. Students can build communication system on the ETT-22 board by joining together circuit blocks using cables similar to block diagrams studied during the class. DATEx includes 20 circuit blocks for basic communications operations such as adder, multiplier, mixer, signal generator and phase shifters, which can be used in the construction of block diagrams by patching them together according to theoretical telecommunications block diagrams by using wires and NI ELVIS to supply the stimulus and measure the response [7]. EMONA net*TIMS: It is a client-server architecture based system, which offers hardware-based experiments delivered to multiple students across the Internet. The net*TIMS-enabled modules have knobs, controllers, switches and potentiometers which can be remotely controlled via Ethernet. The net*TIMS-enabled modules are plugged into a standard Emona TIMS-301 System Unit and connected to the net*TIMS server, which is linked up to the LAN/Internet via an Ethernet port. The GUI at the user computer reproduces the experiment front panels and shows acquired real signals. The students are able to access the experiments through a JAVA-based client screen relative to the specific experiment set up on the net*TIMS System. The net*TIMS server has multi-user environment functionality, which allows several users, each at a different location, to log onto the same net*TIMS server and independently complete individual sessions of the same experiment [7]. National Instruments The National Instrument (NI) also offers some hardware based educational communication systems. NI ELVIS/EMONA DATEx telecommunications bundle presented in the previous section. In addition, NI offers many RF tools [8]. The NI RF/Communications Lab Bundle (PXI Platform): This NI product offers students the capability to use LabVIEW graphical programming and PXI-based hardware to communicate and receive live RF and communications signals. The NI RF/Communications lab bundle includes hardware and software to build a computer-based platform with a front-loading compact PCI form factor. The bundle includes an eight-slot PXI chassis with an RF signal generator, an RF signal analyzer, and a embedded PC controller. The RF signal generator and RF signal analyzer form a transmitter/receiver pair for communications signals from DC to 2.7 GHz with up to 20 MHz of real-time bandwidth. Both the RF signal generator and RF signal analyzer are programmable with LabVIEW software. The PC controller provides a connection between the computer and the hardware [8]. All NI hardware is controlled by LabVIEW applications, which can be published online by using the web publisher tool available in LabView. The web
Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference University of Houston Copyright 2011, American Society for Engineering Education

publisher tool in LabView can transform the NI RF/Communications lab bundle into a hardwarebased web experiment, which can be freely accessed by students anywhere. NIDA NIDA Corporation, well known for its military applications, offers hardware-based communication systems for civilians [9]. The NIDA system is a combination of the NIDA model 130E trainer console and communication experiment cards. The NIDA Model 130E Trainer Console: This trainer functions as the platform for electronic experiments, which are performed in Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI). The 130E serves as a power supply for NIDA 130 Series experiment cards [9]. The RF Communications Experiment Card Set: This set is designed for NIDA Model 130 series training systems. It can cover the theory of operation, troubleshooting, standard AM/FM broadcast band receivers and AM/SSB/NBFM communications transceivers, which allows students to study a wide range of topics in communication such as basic system composition, the RF spectrum, atmospheric effects on radio waves, modulation techniques, AF/RF and RF/AF conversions, phase-locked loop and manual tuning operations, AGC, crystal and voltage controlled oscillators and antenna theory [9].
Table 1: Educational Communication Systems
Products EMONA TIMS-301/C System Unit EMONA net*TIMS NI ELVIS/EMONA DATEx bundle NI RF/Communications Lab bundle NIDA 130E Training Console/ Experiment Card Set bundle Software Control Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Experiments Level Basic Basic Basic Advanced Basic/Advanced MultiExperiments Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Online Control No Yes No After some modifications No Prices High Expensive Medium Expensive Medium

eComLab System Architecture


The eComLab system is based on a client-server architecture depicted in Figure 4. The main objective was to provide students with a flexible remote interface to a state of the art educational lab environment. To that end a platform with the following properties has been developed: The students can access the remote educational labs by utilizing a regular Web browser. The only requirement is that the browser needs to have Flash and Java plugins. The instructors can remotely administer the system. For this, they only need a Web browser. The system can concurrently support many remote educational labs The system is flexible enough that new educational experiments can be added directly to centralized server or from remote locations by adding a new experimental PC to the system.
Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference University of Houston Copyright 2011, American Society for Engineering Education

If more than one student wants to access the same experiment at the same time, the system will queue the students, and the first student will have full control of the experiment, while the other students will only observe the utilization of it. Each student in control of the experiment is given a time-frame (defined by instructors). When the allocated time is over, the next student in the queue gains control of the experiment. The students are able to watch in real time the experiments being performed remotely by other students or the instructor and partially participate in the experiment.

The system distinguishes between two different users, namely, the student user and the instructor user. As presented before, each student utilizes a normal Web browser in order to have access to the eComLab system. After the student logs into the eComLab system, he/she selects the preferred experiment, after which he/she will be sent to the experiment screen shown in Figure 5. It is composed of three parts: the remote desktop application, the educational lab video, and the chat room. The remote desktop is an applet that allows students to remotely control a computer to which some experimental hardware is attached. The applet shows the time which the student has been using the experiment and also the student position in the queue. The educational lab video is a flash video that presents to the user a real time live video feed of the experimental hardware. The chat room is an applet that allows all the users that are in the experiment room to communicate with each other and partially participate to the experiment.

Fig. 4: eComLab System Architecture

The instructor also utilizes an application that runs through a Web browser in order to manage the eComLab system. The tasks of this application are managing students, experiments, academic materials and surveys. Both student and instructor clients were coded in PHP with a MySQL database. The remote desktop applet utilizes a modified version of the open source tightVNC [10], and the video streaming client utilizes a modified version of the Red 5 client player written in flash [11].
Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference University of Houston Copyright 2011, American Society for Engineering Education

The server side is composed of a main central server and several machines dedicated to the experiments. All components are set up as virtual machines. This simplifies the setup, maintenance and security of the whole system. For example, many experiments provide the same control applications to the client side. This can be easily set up by cloning and distributing an initial virtual machine image. Snapshots of the virtual machines can be used as fast backups of the system. And last but not least, virtual machines cleanly separate different experiments and their user interfaces from each other, providing a sandbox environment for students so that the host machine is protected from tampering.

Real-Time Video Streaming Remote Experiment

Chat Room

Fig. 5: Student Client GUI

The central server is running Ubuntu Linux and provides the following services: an Apache HTTP server for the Web interface, a MySQL database for storage, and a Red 5 streaming video server. This centralized virtual machine server is used as a gateway, i.e., it is responsible for managing all the user accesses to the system. Actual access to the experiments is established through redirection of the clients. This improves the security of the local network, which can be private, as well as allows NAT for the experiment machines. Besides administrating the physical experiment machine network, the central server has the ability to host and administrate several virtual experiment machines connected to experiment equipment. Each experiment machine is a server, which contains a set of two virtual machines, one containing a video broadcasting application, which is attached to a web camera, and is responsible to transmit the educational lab board to the user. The second virtual machine contains a remote desktop server that allows a user to use a restricted Windows XP SO that contains some specific software to control the connected experiment hardware. This architecture
Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference University of Houston Copyright 2011, American Society for Engineering Education

allows the remote user to run the experiments in the educational lab exploring the equipment control software. Real time video streaming from Web cameras allows student to visually monitor the experiment procedure in real time. For further security, all transmissions in the eComLab system are encrypted. In the Figure 4, the black arrows represent HTTPS messages that can be exchanged among the clients and the central server, where dotted arrows represent internal messages exchanged among the virtual machines servers. The direction of an arrow depicts the sender and the receiver of the messages exchanged.

The Students Experiences


The first part of this section describes the Emona/eComLab system, followed by the description of a conducted knowledge test and survey. Finally the results of the students performance and survey results conclude the section. Emona/eComLab System As presented in section 3 the EMONA net*TIMS is hardware based, fully operated over the Internet communication trainer offered by EMONA TIMS. However, the high price of the system, the client side software requirements, and the absence of experiment reality sense are the prohibitive factors for the wide EMONA net*TIMS exploration. NI ELVIS/EMONA DATEx telecommunications bundle is a complete hardware based trainer, which provides the same range of experiments as EMONA net*TIMS and is also 4 times cheaper than the EMONA net*TIMS system. The NI ELVIS/EMONA DATEx was chosen as an affordable alternative to EMONA net*TIMS. As discussed in section 3 the NI ELVIS/EMONA DATEx telecommunication bundle can be fully controlled by EMONA DATEx SFPs software. NI ELVIS/EMONA DATEx integrated with eComLab was chosen as a potential solution. As described in the section 4 eComLab is based on remote desktop technology. NI ELVIS/EMONA DATEx is connected to the eComLabs experiment machine. The EMONA DATEx SFPs and NI ELVIS control software are installed on the experiment machine to give the user tools to control and monitor the results generated by the NI ELVIS/EMONA DATEx trainer. NI ELVIS/EMONA DATEx is connected to the eComLabs experiment machine. The eComLab simply gives remote access to the experiment machine and therefore as well to the EMONA DATEx SFPs and NI ELVIS control software. All the connections on the EMONA DATEx are done by the instructor. The video of that process is available in the eComLab. The students have the opportunity to monitor the experiment design procedure on the EMONA DATEx by real time streaming video from a Web camera or by prerecorded video. Additionally, step by step well defined experiment tutorials in PDF format are available in the eComLab for each experiment. In order to complete the communication experiments, students need to pass specific parameters given in an experiment tutorial through EMONA DATEx SFPs software to the hardware to generate and monitor the radio communication waveforms on the NI ELVIS software.
Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference University of Houston Copyright 2011, American Society for Engineering Education

Knowledge Test A knowledge test has been designed to evaluate the experiments usefulness and effectiveness. There are two types of short quizzes designed for each experiment; before and after experiment quizzes. Each quiz contains 3 to 5 multiple-choice questions and one open-ended question. In the case of the open-ended question students have opportunity to illustrate their knowledge based on their own answer formulation, which helps instructors to be more objective in the student knowledge evaluation. The quiz, which conducted before an experiment, contains questions related to the general concept of the experiment theory. It helps to evaluate the students knowledge about the subject before the experiment and adjust the experiment difficulty accordingly. The quiz after the experiment contains questions related to the experiment theoretical aspects and the experiment results. The open-ended question asks students to describe the experiment results from the theoretical point of view. This set of questions helps to evaluate the students knowledge after the experiment, which in general directly reflects the experiments effectiveness in the student education procedure. The following are examples of multiple-choice and open-ended questions from the quiz held before the Double Sideband Suppressed Carrier (DSBSC) experiment:
Multiple-Choice Question: Which one is the DSBSC modulated signal? A. DSBSC modulated signal = message signal * message signal B. DSBSC modulated signal = message signal / carrier signal C. DSBSC modulated signal = message signal + carrier signal D. DSBSC modulated signal = carrier signal message signal Open-End Question: Based on your experiment results how and why do we need the carrier signal for DSBSC modulation? Explain your answer

Survey There were two surveys completed by 17 students. The first set of questions was related to the hands-on experiments carried out in the physical lab, and the second set of questions was related to the remote experiments completed over the eComLab system. In the first survey the questions were designed to get the students feedback about physical labs functionality, which includes hardware and software usability, communication experiments and corresponding tutorials quality. In the second survey the questions were divided into four categories: Acceptance: these questions were designed to determine whether carrying out experiments via eComLab is a potentially good or bad way of learning.
Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference University of Houston Copyright 2011, American Society for Engineering Education

Usability: this set of questions aims to determine the practical aspects of the eComLab and how easy students found it to handle the eComLab and experiments. Usefulness: this set of questions was designed to find out how useful the remote experiments were in the overall study process. Future development: this set of questions was designed to get general information about the students Web browser, computers OS, and problems met during experiments for future eComLab modifications. The questions on the first survey and the first three categories of the second survey were answered on a five-level Likert scale from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. The answers for the questions in the future development were in the form of specific sets of multi-option or open-ended answers. In total the first survey contained 10 questions and one open-ended question asking for comments or suggestions about experiments and the second contained 17 questions with an additional open-ended question asking students to comment or to make a suggestion about future eComLab modifications. Table 4 shows the questions used in the first survey with the corresponding student feedback results. Table 5 shows the questions presented to the students in the second survey with the students feedbacks. Results According to the syllabus of the Communication Systems class offered at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) at the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), undergraduate students had to complete the set of basic radio communication experiments. The ECE department has three NI ELVIS/EMONA DATEx experiment boards. The students completed the following experiments: Double Sideband Suppressed Carrier (DSBSC) modulation, Amplitude Modulation (AM), Amplitude Demodulation, and Frequency Modulation (FM). In order to complete the experiment students spent on average 50 minutes. The DSBSC modulation and Amplitude Demodulation experiments were offered in the physical lab. Because of the limited number of hardware and time, students divided into six groups, three students each. The groups could choose the time slot from a time sheet to carry out the experiments in the lab. The second set of experiments, AM and FM, were offered through the eComLab. All the NI ELVIS/EMONA DATEx experimental boards were connected to the eComLab. All the boards were prepared for the same experiment to give students more flexibility and avoid congestion. Students had access to the experiments 24 hours a day during one week. Because of eComLab capabilities students were given a choice to work in a group or alone. Before and after each experiment students had taken quizzes. The correct answer for each answered question corresponded to 1 credit point and the wrong answer to 0 credit point. A conventional assessment method [12] has been used to analyze student performance. The results are shown in Table 2 and Table 3.
Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference University of Houston Copyright 2011, American Society for Engineering Education

The quiz results, based on comparing mean and the standard deviation values with the valid knowledge evaluation design (Cronbachs Alpha needs to be greater than 0.7), show that students knowledge test performance after experiments for most cases are better than before for all experiments. The students knowledge evaluation showed that the radio communication experiments are effective educational tool to the students education process. After both type of experiments, students knowledge test results improved, which demonstrates that hands-on communication experiments and the communication experiments carried out through eComLab were equally effective, and the eComLab can help to utilize the limited number of equipment as effective as traditional hands-on laboratories.

Table 2: The Students Knowledge Evaluation Before Experiments


Experiments DSBSC AM demodulation AM & FM modulation (Remote Experiments) Questions 4 5 8 N 17 18 17 Alpha 0.82 0.71 0.84 MG 0.75 0.78 0.5 SD 0.17 0.17 0.24

Questions: number of questions used in quizzes N: Number of students attended quizzes Alpha: Cronbachs Alpha reliability parameters MG: The percentagewise mean of students grades, Min=0 and Max=1 SD: standard deviation

Table 3: The Students Knowledge Evaluation After Experiments


Experiments DSBSC AM demodulation AM & FM modulation (Remote Experiments) Questions 6 4 8 N 18 17 17 Alpha 0.73 0.76 0.84 MG 0.82 0.89 0.73 SD 0.13 0.14 0.17

Questions: number of questions in written quizzes N: Number of students attended quizzes Alpha: Cronbachs Alpha reliability parameters MG: The percentagewise mean of students grades, Min=0 and Max=1 SD: standard deviation

After finishing the experiments two surveys were collected from the students on their opinion about the experiments and the eComLab system. The first survey was collected after finishing the physical hands-on laboratories. The set of questions asked for the students feedback in general, such as what is their opinion about the offered experiments concepts, hardware/software bundle capabilities, and the role of the communication labs in their learning. The questions of the first survey and the students feedback analysis are shown in Table 4. The second survey was collected after finalizing the communication experiments over the eComLab. The questions of the second survey and the students feedback analysis are shown in the Table 5. To analyze the survey results the statistics-based parameters such as mean values, standard deviations, and Cronbachs Alpha parameters have been used. Table 4 shows the first survey results. The results showed that the overall students responses about using the hardware based experiments during the communication systems class were
Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference University of Houston Copyright 2011, American Society for Engineering Education

positive. The experiments were useful for students to gain hands-on experience (M=4.47) and helped them to gain additional knowledge and to better understand the subject concept (M=4.53). The experiments also helped them to learn working in teams (M=4.05). The majority found that the hardware (M=4.17) and software (M=4.41) usability was adequate; the lab experiments were well defined (M=3.88) with clear tutorials (M=4.35). The students were mostly satisfied with the labs and gained knowledge (M=4.52) and would like to have more communication labs (M=4.35). The final question of the first survey was asking for the students opinion about the usefulness of the eComLab concept in hands-on learning process. Overly the students found that the remote labs would still be a useful hands-on learning tool if physical labs were not available (M=3.52). Table 5 shows the overall results of the second survey for the categories acceptance, usability, usefulness and partially future development. The acceptance category average result is above the medium (M=3.35), as well as the usefulness (M=3.83) and usability (M=3.83) categories.
Table 4: The List of Questions Used in the Survey 1
Questions The communication lab helps me to gain knowledge and understand subject concepts. The communication lab helps me to gain hands-on experience. The communication lab helps me to learn working in teams. Hardware usability is adequate. Software usability is adequate. The lab experiments are well defined. The tutorials are concise and clear. I am generally satisfied with the labs and gained knowledge. I would like to have more communication labs. If physical labs are not available then remote labs will be still useful hands-on learning tools. Questions: questions used in questionnaire M: mean value, Min=1 and Max=5 SD: standard deviation M 4.53 4.47 4.05 4.17 4.41 3.88 4.35 4.52 4.35 3.52 SD 1.26 1.35 1.23 1.22 1.11 0.99 1.16 1.17 1.25 1.39

Table 5: Quality Analysis of the Remote System


Categories Acceptance Usability Usefulness Future Development Questions 4 4 5 2 N 17 17 17 17 Alpha 0.88 0.72 0.94 0.74 M 3.35 3.83 3.89 4.03 SD 1.05 0.96 1.01 1.07

Questions: number of questions in questionnaire categories N: Number of students Alpha: Cronbachs Alpha reliability parameters M: mean value, Min=1 and Max=5 SD: standard deviation

Table 6 shows the second survey results for the individual questions in detail. Looking at the acceptance scale it is interesting to note that students enjoyed working with the eComLab experiments (M=3.35). They found that the eComLab provides acceptable useful hands-on experience (M =3.47). Despite of running the experiment remotely, most of the students thought that they were in control of the experiment (M=3.41) and the eComLab provides an acceptable sense of reality (3.17).
Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference University of Houston Copyright 2011, American Society for Engineering Education

In the usability category almost all the students strongly agreed that the eComLab provides flexibility, in the sense of time and location, to perform experiments (M=4.76). The eComLab has a friendly and easy to use interface (M=3.64) which can enable group work during experiments (M=3.11). Overall students found that the functionality of the eComLab was satisfactory (M=3.82). Turning to the usefulness category, judging from most of the students feedback the eComLab provides more time individually to explore the experiments (M=3.70). The eComLab motivated the students to learn more (M=3.76) and helped them to better understand the subject (M=3.64).
Table 6: The List of Questions Used in the Survey 2
Categories Acceptance Questions I enjoyed using eComLab. The eComLab provides a useful hands-on experience by complementing regular labs and textbook material. Even though I worked remotely, I have felt myself to be in control of the experiment. The eComLab potentially conveys an impression of conducting physical experiment. The eComLab provides flexibility (time and location) to perform experiments. The eComLab has a proper interface to enable group work. The eComLab user interface is friendly and easy to use. Overall the functionality of the eComLab was satisfactory considering it is just implemented and offered for the first time. The eComLab experiments helped me to understand the subject. In comparison with physical labs the eComLab provides more time for an individual exploration. The eComLab generally motivate to learn more about the subject. I would recommend other students to use eComLab labs if such an opportunity exists and real labs are not available. In my opinion it might be useful to use eComLab concept in other classes as well if possible. I had critical technical problems during eComLab experiments. What is your computer Operation System? What Internet Browser do you use? The assigned time is enough to complete the eComLab experiments. M 3.35 3.47 3.41 3.17 4.76 3.11 3.64 3.82 3.64 3.70 3.76 4.05 4.29 3.59 4.52 SD 1.23 1.03 0.69 1.14 0.42 0.92 1.02 0.78 1.02 1.12 1.05 0.87 0.82 1.19 0.60

Usability

Usefulness

Future Development

Questions: questions used in questionnaire M: mean value, Min=1 and Max=5 SD: standard deviation

Finally, the big portion of the students found that the eComLab educational concept can be used in other classes as well (M=4.29) and they would recommend other students to use eComLab labs if such an opportunity exists (M=4.05). An open-ended question gave the students the opportunity to suggest some improvements to the eComLab experiments. A total of 11 students used this opportunity for constructive criticism and suggestions. Its purpose was to highlight opportunities for improvement. Some Students Comments:
It was a good idea since it was helpful to do it from home. The only comment I have is the delay in the system. It was a little slow, but everything else was great. Thought the virtual lab was great! I would prefer the remote lab be used during lecture.

Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference University of Houston Copyright 2011, American Society for Engineering Education

I didnt have any critical technical problems, but there were problems. The system slowed down sometimes, but not to the point where you couldnt work. Speeding the server might help. I think the remote lab is great when it comes to flexibility (time and location), but I still like better the hands-on experience. It gives you a better feeling as to what you are working on.

Conclusion
The created Emona/eComLab system is a successful integration of the remote desktop technology and the ELVIS/Emona DATEx system, which provides engineering students with practical methods of empirically gaining experiment knowledge by performing laboratory experiments remotely. This is especially valuable for those students who cannot physically attend lab sessions to obtain hands-on experience, and it helps to successfully utilize the limited experiment equipment in the large classes. The Emona/eComLab has recently been used in class. In spite of the fact that the majority of the students had not used this kind of system before; they certainly would like to use them in the future. Most of the class, after using the system, opined that it helped them to better understand the syllabus topics and gain more applied knowledge. The knowledge test showed that the students overall knowledge has been increased after completing the experiments, and the Emona/eComLab system was as effective as hands-on experiments. The majority of the students overwhelmingly indicated that they would like to use eComLab system in their future classes.

References
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Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference University of Houston Copyright 2011, American Society for Engineering Education

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Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference University of Houston Copyright 2011, American Society for Engineering Education

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