Internet Accessible Remote Experimentation with Integrated Learning Management System

Abul K. M. Azad; Munish Sharma

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Conference: 2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Atlanta, Georgia
Publication Date: June 23, 2013
Start Date: June 23, 2013
End Date: June 26, 2013
ISSN: 2153-5965
Conference Session: Information and Network Security
Tagged Division: Computing & Information Technology
Page Count: 21
Page Numbers: 23.807.1 - 23.807.21
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--19821
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/19821
Download Count: 508

Paper Authors

biography

Abul K. M. Azad Northern Illinois University

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Abul K. M. Azad is a Professor with the Technology Department of Northern Illinois University. He has a Ph.D. in Control and Systems Engineering and M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Electronics Engineering. He has been in academics for 15+ years, and his research interests include remote laboratories, mechatronic systems, mobile robotics, and educational research. In these areas, Dr. Azad has over 100 refereed journal and conference papers, edited books, and book chapters. So far, he has attracted around $1.7M of research and development grants from various national and international funding agencies. He is a member of the editorial board for a number of professional journals as well as an Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Online Engineering. He is active with various professional organizations as well as a board of Trustees of CLAWAR Association. He has served as Chair and Co-Chairs of numerous conferences and workshops, in addition to serving on the program committees of around 30 international conferences. He is a senior member of IEEE and International Society of Automation, and a member of American Society for Engineering Education, and Institution of Engineering and Technology.

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Munish Sharma Northern Illinois University

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Abstract

ASEE Annual Conference 2013 Atlanta, USA Remote Experimentation with Learning Management FacilityThis paper will describe the design and development of an Internet accessible remote laboratoryalong with a learning management system. Researchers and academics are developing Internetaccessible remote laboratories and only few of them are in use for course delivery. A generalblock diagram of a typical remote laboratory facility is shown in Figure 1a. This arrangementallows a user/client to access and manipulate an experimental hardware over the Internet from aremote location.The limitations of these facilities are lack of available information of facility usage, useracceptance of the system, allocation of available laboratory experiments to various studentgroups, student management, facility usage data for overall statistics and tracking of individualstudent. To address the issues the authors are working on developing a software environmentthat will integrate Internet accessible remote laboratory with a learning management facility.The integrated remote laboratory facility will have the ability to address all the issues asmentioned earlier. The work is conducted with the support of a National Science Foundationproject grant. The integrated facility will have two levels of access, user level and administratorlevel. The user level of access is for students or a user who is taking a laboratory course usingthis environment, when the administrator access is for a faculty or administrator who will beconducting a laboratory course using the facility. All the features within the facility are operatedvia applications developed by using .NET technology. Provision has also been made to collect arange of data automatically. Some of these collected data will be analyzed by an administratorvia web based applications, when remaining data can be downloaded by an administrator andanalyzed later, whenever needed.With the user level of access students can have access to the remote experiments during theirallocated time slot (and/or first come first server basis), take part in group discussion, updatepersonal and demographic data, response to ESM (experience sampling method) survey. Whenthe administrator level of access will allow one to manage access control, activate and deactivateexperiments, control of individual student account as well as a group, experiment allocationstrategy for student groups, tracking facility usage, arranging ESM survey, adding or editingESM survey question, and collected data downloading. An image of the administrator homepage shows all the capabilities with administrative access (Figure 1b).In terms of software development, for remote laboratory facility part, the integrated facility usescomputer interfacing hardware and software from National Instruments (Input/Output cards andLabVIEW). User management and learning management tools and associated applications areimplemented by using MySQL for database and .NET for application development.The paper will be divided into six parts- Introduction, remote laboratory system (hardware andsoftware), learning management features, experience sampling method, data collection andvisualization, and conclusion.ASEE Annual Conference 2013 Atlanta, USA Figure 1a: System diagram for an Internet accessible remote laboratory. Figure 1b: Image of the Administer home page.

Citation
Format

Azad, A. K. M., & Sharma, M. (2013, June), Internet Accessible Remote Experimentation with Integrated Learning Management System Paper presented at 2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Atlanta, Georgia. 10.18260/1-2--19821

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -    ASEE Annual Conference 2013                                                       Atlanta, USA          Remote Experimentation with Learning Management FacilityThis paper will describe the design and development of an Internet accessible remote laboratoryalong with a learning management system. Researchers and academics are developing Internetaccessible remote laboratories and only few of them are in use for course delivery. A generalblock diagram of a typical remote laboratory facility is shown in Figure 1a. This arrangementallows a user/client to access and manipulate an experimental hardware over the Internet from aremote location.The limitations of these facilities are lack of available information of facility usage, useracceptance of the system, allocation of available laboratory experiments to various studentgroups, student management, facility usage data for overall statistics and tracking of individualstudent. To address the issues the authors are working on developing a software environmentthat will integrate Internet accessible remote laboratory with a learning management facility.The integrated remote laboratory facility will have the ability to address all the issues asmentioned earlier. The work is conducted with the support of a National Science Foundationproject grant. The integrated facility will have two levels of access, user level and administratorlevel. The user level of access is for students or a user who is taking a laboratory course usingthis environment, when the administrator access is for a faculty or administrator who will beconducting a laboratory course using the facility. All the features within the facility are operatedvia applications developed by using .NET technology. Provision has also been made to collect arange of data automatically. Some of these collected data will be analyzed by an administratorvia web based applications, when remaining data can be downloaded by an administrator andanalyzed later, whenever needed.With the user level of access students can have access to the remote experiments during theirallocated time slot (and/or first come first server basis), take part in group discussion, updatepersonal and demographic data, response to ESM (experience sampling method) survey. Whenthe administrator level of access will allow one to manage access control, activate and deactivateexperiments, control of individual student account as well as a group, experiment allocationstrategy for student groups, tracking facility usage, arranging ESM survey, adding or editingESM survey question, and collected data downloading. An image of the administrator homepage shows all the capabilities with administrative access (Figure 1b).In terms of software development, for remote laboratory facility part, the integrated facility usescomputer interfacing hardware and software from National Instruments (Input/Output cards andLabVIEW). User management and learning management tools and associated applications areimplemented by using MySQL for database and .NET for application development.The paper will be divided into six parts- Introduction, remote laboratory system (hardware andsoftware), learning management features, experience sampling method, data collection andvisualization, and conclusion.ASEE Annual Conference 2013                                                   Atlanta, USA         Figure 1a: System diagram for an Internet accessible remote laboratory.                      Figure 1b: Image of the Administer home page.
AU  - Abul K. M.  Azad
AU  - Munish Sharma
CY  - Atlanta, Georgia
DA  - 2013/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Internet Accessible Remote Experimentation with Integrated Learning Management System
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/19821
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--19821
ER  -