iLabs:
Laboratories Without Frontiers
Kirky DeLong
Senior Project Manager, MIT
May 18, 2016
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Game Changing Technologies
May 18, 2016
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Game Changing Technologies
How have these technologies changed
today’s learning environment?
May 18, 2016
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Forces influencing learning
May 18, 2016
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Drivers
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Handheld, portable & wireless technologies are
enabling public commons & informal spaces to
have new functionality.
Convergence
 Cell phones: becoming multipurpose
 iPods: podcasting educational content, video
 PDAs: richer capabilities
 VoIP: new communication tools
Increasing demand for informal study/work
spaces, beyond the classroom.
More overt recognition of when place matters
& orienting oneself by that knowledge
May 18, 2016
Moving from
Location-Centric to
Location-Independent
learning discourse
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Increasingly blended
learning experiences
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Collaborative
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Immersive
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Integrated
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Hybrid
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Blended
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
May 18, 2016
Harvard Simulation Center
Chalmers University
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Increasingly blended
learning experiences
Why do you believe are
laboratories are an important
educational experience?
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Brainstorming why are labs
important?
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Abstract concepts become real
Observe dynamic phenomena
Motivate and engage student curiosity
and enhance learning experience
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Four underlying themes
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Illustrating and validating analytical
concepts
Introducing students to professional
practice, and to the uncertainties involved
in non-ideal situations
Developing skills with instrumentation
Developing social and teamwork skills in a
technical environment
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Downside to Laboratories
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Expensive to run
Logistics and schedule issues
Safety issues
Space requirements
Can’t always be shared
Require physical attendance
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Alternative to Laboratories
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Replace Laboratories
In class Demos
Videos
Simulations
Remote Laboratories
Hybrid/Blended Laboratories
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Lot of reasons to
put labs on line?
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Maximize equipment usage (sharing and available 24/7)
Reduce lab costs (single lab setups)
Minimize lab space needs (facilities)
Reduce Faculty and staff time
Reduce Safety Concerns
Create new laboratory experiences that didn’t exist before and
enhance curriculum
More lab time for students 24/7
Minimize frustrations with hardware and setup
Maximize learning outcomes
Access to resources in unusual locations, expensive
equipment, rare materials
Remote students – internet based courses
May 18, 2016
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The Value of Laboratory Classes…
…is that they’re different
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Different objectives
Different methods
Different experiences
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What Kind of Differences?
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Student happiness
Student assessment outcomes
Student learning outcomes
Students’ perceptions of learning
outcomes
From Euan Lindsay, Curtin University of Technology
May 18, 2016
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Why are they happy?
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Novelty
Hawthorne Effect
Flexible Scheduling
Increased access
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Student Learning Outcomes
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Students are more reflective with
remote labs
Students tend to “experiment” more
with remote labs
Better able to handle unexpected data
Still understand physical meanings of
their data
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Perceptions of Learning outcomes
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Students have different expectations of
the different access modes
Students engage differently in the
different modes
Very similar experiences can lead to
very different perceptions
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Important Factors
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Transparency
Reliability
Students must focus upon the
experiment, not on the interface
All the gains from remote labs go away
if the interface is opaque or not intuitive
The laboratory must still be real
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Establishment of reality
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Novices need to establish reality
Regular users need to maintain
reality
Expert users need neither
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What have we learned?
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Remote lab experiences can significantly enhance
learning
For educational experiences to be effective:
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system has to work well, specially under peak load conditions
system must allow free exploration and making many mistakes
clear documentation and tutorials are essential
Several small assignments more effective than few
large projects
Students find difficulty in handling real-world data
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offline, post-measurement portion of assignment critical to learning
experience
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iLab: the Opportunities
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Order of magnitude more laboratories available to our
students
Unique labs:
Unusual locations, expensive
equipment, rare materials
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Rich pedagogical experiences:
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http://www.cameco.com/common/images/u101/reactor2.jpg
More lab time to students
GUI to lab integrating graphing, simulation, collaboration, tutoring
Worldwide communities of scholars
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What is iLab?
iLabs are real laboratories running
live experiments that are accessed
through the Internet from
anywhere around the world at any
time.
May 18, 2016
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Curriculum Goals
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Active learning opportunities
Inquiry-based pedagogy
Engage students by allowing them to:
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Collect and analyze real data
Run an experiment multiple time with
different conditions
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One Lab … Many Experiences
High School Student
examine how a
transistor works?
Researcher might
comparing
transistor doping
materials
University Student
experiment with the power
efficiency of a device
May 18, 2016
Interested Public explore
energy efficiency of transistors
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iLab Use Around the World
Portland
NWU
OSU
MI
CM
T
U
ITESM
Chalmer
Pavia
s
Deust
NTU Bagdad
Parma
o
PSUT
AUB
Cairo
OAU
Makerere
UDSM
Mauritius
DLUT
CCU Taipei
NUS
Queensland
iLabs has been used by over
25 universities on five continents.
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WebLab Capacity
• What is the lab system capacity?
• When do students carry out assignment?
2PM: 6.012
exercise out
(75 students)
4PM:
6.720J/3.43J
exercise out
(25 students)
May 18, 2016
[Oct. 13-20, 2000]
2PM: 6.012 4PM:
exercise due 6.720J/3.43J
exercise due
Remote Laboratories and IoT- NSF
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WebLab Capacity
2PM: 6.012
exercise out
(75 students)
4PM:
6.720J/3.43J
exercise out
(25 students)
[Oct. 13-20, 2000]
2PM: 6.012 4PM:
exercise due 6.720J/3.43J
exercise due
System capacity: > 2,000 users/week, > 15,000 jobs/week
May 18, 2016
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Microelectronics Device
Characterization
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Since 1998
Measurement of DC current-voltage characteristics
of microelectronics devices (and small circuits)
Used in three different courses at MIT:
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6.002 Circuits and Electronics
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6.012 Electronic Devices and Circuits
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2nd year mandatory “core” subject, EECS
3rd year “header” subject, EECS
6.720J/3.43J Integrated Microelectronic Devices
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Graduate subject, EECS+DMSE
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Microelectronics iLab
Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer,
Switching Matrix
Device under test
Device test fixtures
Lab Server
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Typical Assignment
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Measure transistor characteristics
Extract transistor parameters
Compare measurements with class models
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Microelectronics Device
Characterization iLab
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iLabs in 6.002
DC
Time domain
Frequency domain
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Demo
iLab Demo
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National Instruments ELVIS
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All-in-one electronics workbench
Performs variety of basic functions
Readily software
controllable (LabVIEW)
Compact
Cost-effective
May 18, 2016
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Voltage Divider Activity
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What does a voltage divider do?
Why is it important?
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The Equation
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Participant Activity:
Try the two experimental setups
Voltage D2 and Voltage D3 and
examine the relationship between
Vin and Vout.
What are the rough % of the voltage
dividers?
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MITES
Project
May 18, 2016
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MIT TeachSpin iLab
May 18, 2016
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41
MIT Spectrometer iLab
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42
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UQ Inverted Pendulum iLab
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Was the Inverted Pendulum
Experiment a “Success”?
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iLab Shared Architecture
Campus
network
Client
Internet
Service
Broker
Database Storage
May 18, 2016
Lab Servers
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Generic iLab Services
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User authentication (and registration)
User authorization and credential
(group) management
Experiment specification and result
storage
Lab scheduling
May 18, 2016
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iLabs Design Strategy
Separate responsibilities of the lab
provider from those teaching.
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The lab provider designs and makes the
laboratory experiment available online in as
effective a presentation as possible
The teaching faculty register their own students,
manage their accounts and result storage, and
set course policy (e.g. can students collaborate)
May 18, 2016
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iLab Architecture Boundaries
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Our architecture doesn’t deal with specific
hardware and software interfaces to lab
equipment
Our architecture is intended to be compatible
and complementary with commercial software
such as National Instruments LabView and
analysis packages like Matlab
May 18, 2016
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Collaboration With iLabs
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GOLC
Africa: OAU, Makerere, UDSM, Ghana Telecom University
College, National University of Rwanda,
Europe: Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Technical
University of Graz, Blekinge Institute of Technology, UNED,
Deusto
Australia: University of Queensland
US: Northwestern University, Chicago public schools, Ohio
State University, Texas Southern University, OSU, MOSTEC,
edX
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Global Online Laboratory
Consortium
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Gateway4Labs Collaboration
May 18, 2016
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iLab-Africa project
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Goals:
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Obafemi
Awolowo
University
May 18, 2016
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To deploy iLabs throughout
curriculum in Africa
To support new iLab
development in Africa
To create opportunities for
internships for MIT and African
students
To create a scalable iLab
research network in Africa
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Unique Issues in Africa
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Opportunities:
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Scarcity of labs
Lots of young enthusiastic people
Great need for engineers
Challenges:
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Limited access to networked computers
Limited computer literacy
Severe bandwidth limitations
May 18, 2016
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Bandwidth limitations
(example: Makerere University, Kampala)
campus wide singlemode optical fiber (2
Gb/s)
satellite gateway to
Internet (total
bandwidth of
Uganda=25 Mb/s)
metropolitan
network (total
campus
bandwidth=2.5
Mb/s)
academic buildings networked at 10/100 Mb/s
May 18, 2016
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iLab Partnerships:
Technical University of Graz
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MIT iLab Project has
hosted graduate students
from Graz for extended
visits
Team has worked on a
virtual world interface to
MIT Force on a Dipole
iLab
Produced working demos
and publications
May 18, 2016
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May 18, 2016
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iLab Partnerships:
Carinthia University of Applied Sciences
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Developer exchanges supporting iLab development
 Interactive iLab based on Altera CPLD, LabVIEW
 Interfacing between remote lab architectures –
iLabs and VISIR
 Developer workshops
May 18, 2016
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iLab Partnerships:
Northwestern University
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NSF-funded project focused
on integrating iLabs into
secondary schools
iLabs are used to
demonstrate science
relating to topics of interest
 Makes STEM programs
more engaging
Presently focused on
physics, though new iLabs
in biology and chemistry are
forthcoming
May 18, 2016
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Discussion Questions?
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Could you envision remote labs in your
classes?
How remote laboratories could be used
to widen access?
The opportunities and barriers that you
see for using remote laboratories?
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“If You Can’t Come to the Lab… the
Lab Will Come to You!”
(Earth at 89 GHz; courtesy of J. Grahn, Chalmers U.)
May 18, 2016
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Exploring iLabs
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Try out iLabs: http://ilab.mit.edu
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Explore the iLab wiki
May 18, 2016
http://ilab.mit.edu/wiki
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