Remote Experimentation - One Building Block in Online Engineering Education

Abstract Currently, engineering education is undergoing significant structural changes worldwide. The rapidly changing technological landscape forces educators to constantly reassess the content of engineering curricula in the context of emerging fields and with a multidisciplinary focus. In this process, it is necessary to devise, implement and evaluate innovative pedagogical approaches for the incorporation of these novel subjects into the educational programs without compromising the cultivation of the traditional skills. In this framework, modern information technology based on the Internet is rapidly being adopted in engineering education as a tool for enhancing the educational experience of students residing on campus as well as to expand the reach of unique programs beyond the local campus through distance learning. Stevens Institute of Technology is currently in a dynamic phase of transforming all its educational offerings. It has recently adopted a new undergraduate engineering curriculum with both a design spine and a laboratory experience propagating through the entire educational program. A student laboratory that is founded on Internet-based, remotely accessible experimental setups was developed and implemented. In this approach, the students’ experimental experience is greatly expanded by allowing them to not only use the experimental facilities in the traditional on-site fashion but also to remotely access the computer controlled laboratory setup of interest through the Internet, thus making the laboratories available at anytime from anywhere. This paper presents an initial assessment of the experiences gained from the implementation of the remotely accessible laboratory into a sophomore-level core course on dynamical systems and a junior-year elective course on mechanisms and machine dynamics. In addition, it analyzes the advantages and shortcomings of such remote laboratories. Introduction Stevens Institute of Technology is a private technological university, which recently implemented a new undergraduate engineering curriculum. This curriculum is designed to reflect the nationwide trend towards enhancement of traditional lecture-based courses with a significant design thread and a comprehensive laboratory experience that propagates through the entire undergraduate educational