A Framework for Sharing Online Laboratory Resources

Numerous online laboratory resources have been and continue to be developed by many educational institutions around the world. These resources include both remote laboratories, which are based on actual experimental devices accessed remotely, as well as virtual laboratories, which represent software simulations of experiments. In the vast majority of the cases, the remotely accessible online laboratories reported on in the literature represent stand-alone systems, which are typically difficult to share by large numbers of learners dispersed at various educational institutions. This has led to the existence of many functionally similar, but independently operating systems developed in many places. This paper will identify the common features of such online laboratory resources. Then, the framework for a network of interconnected resource managers, which facilitate the efficient implementation and deployment of as well as the subsequent search for and shared usage of online laboratory resources (e.g. remote experiments, virtual experiments, game-based environments, etc.), will be presented. A centralized resource repository is presented that enables the publishing of information on the existence and availability of specific resources through the network. Finally, an example is given that illustrates the issues relating to joining, publishing, searching for and accessing online laboratory resources in that framework.Copyright © 2007 by ASME