2nd World Conference on Technology and Engineering Education Ljubljana, Slovenia, 5-8 September 2011

 2011 WIETE

Remote engineering laboratories for collaborative experiments
A. Nafalski, Z. Nedić & J. Machotka
University of South Australia Adelaide, Australia

ABSTRACT: Personal and professional attributes of university engineering graduates have become local and national priorities in Australia and elsewhere. These include communication skills, the management of information, a capacity for creation and innovation, commitment to professional and ethical responsibilities, leadership and team skills, capacity for lifelong learning and appropriate professional attitudes. This paper reports on selected collaborative remote engineering laboratory developments that can address some or all of the above competence items, and allow experiments to be conducted with partners sitting at the same computer next to each other or at computers dispersed around the world. The Internet enables the global collaboration and information interchange in social media and also in more professionally oriented remote engineering and science laboratories, where students may work together being geographically located elsewhere.

INTRODUCTION Remote laboratories offer great opportunities for local students’ worldwide access to facilities elsewhere in the city, in the country and in the world, the facilities being either unique, expensive, or allowing for interaction via the Internet [1-3]. Few remote laboratories offer a co llaborative working environment, even though engineers collaborate either locally or in geographically dispersed projects in the real world. The NetLab is a u nique collaborative working environment at the University of South Australia (UniSA) that allows up to three students to work together on an experiment [4][5]. The system would allow any number of students