Collaborative Research: Develop Next Generation Unified Framework for Remote Laboratory Experiments

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。该工程教育研究奖授予休斯顿大学与德克萨斯南方大学合作，将雇用研究人员开发远程实验室实验的通用框架，目标是使访问和使用独立于计算机平台、操作系统和浏览器。通过使用网页界面，可以减少访问远程实验的障碍。现有实验将用于测试和评估远程实验室框架，该框架将整合到一些课程中。统一的框架将减少希望使用远程实验室实验的教师对特殊计算机专业知识的需求，因此更多的教师可以利用实验室和教室中的这些资源。该项目将允许在空间和物理资源有限的教育环境中更广泛地使用物理实验室工作。该项目还可以通过安排非现场用户来潜在地提高物理资源的利用率，从而使实验室设备更具成本效益。实践实验经验是本科工程教育的重要组成部分，本研究将促进对如何扩大远程实验室实验的访问和改善工程教育的理解，以使学生为工程工作做好准备。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)This engineering education research award to the University of Houston in collaboration with Texas Southern University will employ researchers to develop a general framework for remote laboratory experiments with the goal of making access and use independent of the computer platform, operating system, and browser. Barriers to access to remote experiments would be reduced through the use of a web page interface. Existing experiments will be used to test and evaluate the remote laboratory framework, and this framework will be integrated into a number of courses. The unified framework will reduce the need for special computer expertise by faculty wishing to use remote laboratory experiments, so a larger pool of faculty can take advantage of these resources in laboratories and classrooms. This project will allow much wider use of physical laboratory work in educational environments which have limited space and physical resources. The project can also potentially increase the utilization of physical resources through scheduling of off-site users, thus making laboratory equipment more cost effective. Hands-on laboratory experience is an essential part of undergraduate engineering education, and this research will advance understanding of how to broadening access to remote laboratory experiments and improve engineering education to prepare students for engineering jobs.