Increasing Student Access to Industrial and Scientific Equipment Training through Authentic Remote Learning Experiences

培养学生成为技术劳动力的一个重要部分是对目前在工业中使用的工程技术进行培训。然而，由于设备成本高和其他限制，为学生提供工业设备对许多社区大学来说是具有挑战性的。即使这样的设备是可用的，它是在实验室设施有限的可用性和很少的灵活性，以适应学生的工作和家庭时间表。COVID-19大流行迫使实验室设施完全关闭，凸显了这些局限性。因此，学生们接触实验设备和培训的机会更少，许多学生无法完成课程。虽然远程教学和远程教育不是新概念，但为设备培训提供真正的远程体验仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。计算机模拟已被用于降低使用工业设备进行培训的成本。然而，这些工具往往过于简化设备，从而限制了学生获得操作设备和排除问题的技能的能力。该项目将开发和评估新的远程访问工具，使学生能够通过互联网控制物理工业设备。这种方法将为大学之间共享资源提供一种新的能力。此外，这些工具将为学生提供在分布式团队中工作的经验，帮助他们为技术劳动力做好准备。通过扩大农村地区或其他限制使用实验室设施的情况下的学生获得技术课程的机会，该项目将有助于扩大技术劳动力的参与。阿勒格尼县社区学院的实验室设施目前为学生提供工业设备的亲自培训，包括机器人，可编程逻辑控制器和机电设备。该项目的目标是创建一种新的远程功能来控制实验室设施中的设备，并评估该功能对学生学习的影响。远程功能将使学生能够访问物理设备，并在另一个位置的计算机上的沉浸式环境中查看其控制动作和控制程序的结果。立体摄像机将传输实验室设备中工作单元的三维视图。学生将能够通过互联网远程触发执行器以实现期望的行为，并近乎实时地查看其动作的结果。该项目将：(1)实施和测试实验室设备的新硬件和软件接口；(2)利用远程能力开发实验练习，为教师制定课程计划，为学生编写教学材料；(3)评估学生在在线课程中的学习情况，并将其与现场同步课程进行比较；(4)将实施范围扩大到多机构、多课程。采用混合方法，项目评估将使用焦点小组、学生调查和前后测试来评估新的远程能力对学生对技术的理解和对其使用设备能力的信心的影响。该项目由先进技术教育计划资助，该计划侧重于为推动国家经济的先进技术领域培养技术人员。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

An important part of preparing students for the technical workforce is training on engineering technologies that are currently used in industry. However, due to high equipment costs and other limitations, providing students with access to industrial equipment can be challenging for many community colleges. Even when such equipment is available, it is in lab facilities that have limited availability and little flexibility to accommodate students’ work and family schedules. These limitations were spotlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced lab facilities to close altogether. As a result, students had even less access to the lab equipment and training, preventing course completion for many students. Although remote instruction and distance education are not new concepts, providing an authentic remote experience for equipment training remains an open problem. Computer simulations have been used to lower the costs for training using industrial equipment. However, these tools tend to oversimplify the equipment, with resulting limits in students’ ability to gain skills in operating the equipment and troubleshooting problems. This project will develop and assess new remote access tools that allow students to control physical industrial equipment over the internet. This approach will provide a new capability for sharing resources amongst colleges. In addition, these tools will give students experience with working on distributed teams, helping prepare them for the technical workforce. By expanding access to technical courses for students living in rural locations or in other situations that limit access to lab facilities, the project will help broaden participation in the technical workforce.Lab facilities at the Community College of Allegheny County currently provide students with in-person training on industrial equipment including robots, programmable logic controllers, and mechatronic devices. The goal of this project is to create a new remote capability for controlling equipment in the lab facilities and evaluate the impact of this capability on student learning. Remote capability will enable students to access physical equipment and view the results of their control actions and control programs in an immersive environment on a computer at another location. Stereo cameras will transmit a three-dimensional view of a work cell in the lab facility. Students will be able to remotely trigger actuators over the internet to achieve a desired behavior and view the results of their actions in near-real-time. This project will: (1) implement and test new hardware and software interfaces for lab equipment; (2) develop lab exercises using the remote capability, lesson plans for instructors, and instructional materials for students; (3) evaluate student learning in on-line courses and compare it to concurrent in-person courses; and (4) expand the implementation to multiple institutions and multiple course offerings. Using a mixed methods approach, the project evaluation will use focus groups, student surveys, and pre- and post-tests to assess the impact of the new remote capability on students’ comprehension of the technologies and their confidence in their ability to use the equipment. This project is funded by the Advanced Technological Education program that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced-technology fields that drive the nation's economy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.