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Providing collaborative support to virtual and remote laboratories

2013; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; Volume: 6; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1109/tlt.2013.20

2372-0050

Luís de la Torre, Rubén Heradio, Carlos A. Jara, J. Sánchez, S. Dormido, Fernando Torres, Francisco A. Candelas-Herías,

Cloud Computing and Remote Desktop Technologies

Virtual and remote laboratories (VRLs) are e-learning resources that enhance the accessibility of experimental setups providing a distance teaching framework which meets the student's hands-on learning needs. In addition, online collaborative communication represents a practical and a constructivist method to transmit the knowledge and experience from the teacher to students, overcoming physical distance and isolation. This paper describes the extension of two open source tools: (1) the learning management system Moodle, and (2) the tool to create VRLs Easy Java Simulations (EJS). Our extension provides: (1) synchronous collaborative support to any VRL developed with EJS (i.e., any existing VRL written in EJS can be automatically converted into a collaborative lab with no cost), and (2) support to deploy synchronous collaborative VRLs into Moodle. Using our approach students and/or teachers can invite other users enrolled in a Moodle course to a real-time collaborative experimental session, sharing and/or supervising experiences at the same time they practice and explore experiments using VRLs.