Portuguese Universities Sharing Remote Laboratories

SYNOPSIS This paper describes a pedagogical assignment based on a cooperative work involving teachers/students from two Portuguese universities. As it happens one is the oldest in the country – University of Coimbra (UC)-and the other the largest-University of Porto (UP), about 120 km apart. The authors, believing in the relevance of the Information and Communication Technologies (ITs) involvement in the teaching /learning methodologies and in the cooperative teaching methods were working together, finding time to plan this pedagogical experience and running it along a one semester course. Students from UC have been introduced to the remote lab at UP and got the first contact with the experiences using easily available sound and image resources based in free Skype and an IP camera for better image quality. This first contact has been conducted by the first author at UP with support of the second author at UC. The work will describe briefly the remote experiments used, their inclusion in the course at UC and the associated assessment criteria and, finally, student comments.


INTRODUCTION
This paper depicts a pedagogical assignment based on a cooperative work involving teachers/students from two Portuguese universities: one is the oldest in the country -University of Coimbra (UC) -and the other the largest -University of Porto (UP), about 120 km apart.
The idea of creating this pedagogical experience came from the Mechanical Engineering Departments from Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade de Coimbra (FCTUC) and from Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (FEUP).
At FEUP, a two-year Project "Experimenta@FEUP" (2006/2008), (Restivo, 2007), has been strongly devoted to promote the use of ITs in the teaching/learning environment, with particular emphasis on the development of remote and virtual laboratories for widening the availability of experimental tools, contributing in this way to increase the so important experimental component in the learning process (Restivo, 2009), (Eason, 1995), (Leitão, 2007).It also aimed to establish links with other higher education institutions in the promotion of experimental tools in engineering education.The Laboratory of Instrumentation for Measurement (LIM) at FEUP has been actively involved in this project, promoting the use of ITs in the classroom, namely by the use of remote and virtual laboratories as well as by developing e-learning courses (Restivo, 2008).LIM is mainly committed to system sensorization, measurement and metrological procedures, system automation, monitoring and data transmission.So, all the remote and virtual experiments conceived and developed at LIM are oriented within these fields.
The next section will briefly describe the involvement of LIM in the setups used as remote laboratories in the present work, among all the resources available at the address http://eLabs.fe.up.pt.
At FCTUC there is a 6 ECTS Measurement and Instrumentation course in the second year of Mechanical Engineering, where the students, besides the explanatory lectures and the resolution of problems, have to do some experimental work in laboratories consisting mainly on the measurement of physical quantities important to the mechanical engineering area.In this course there was already a tradition of resorting to the means offered by modern ITs to facilitate the transmission of knowledge, namely through the use of virtual laboratories that are available to the students (Gameiro da Silva 1, 2006), (Gameiro da Silva 2, 2006), (Gameiro da Silva, 2007), (Gameiro da Silva, 2008).

EXPLORED REMOTE LABS @ FEUP
The more obvious way of starting the collaboration between the two universities was to make available to FCTUC students remote access, through the internet, to the experiences already installed and running at FEUP.The process started with an introductory lecture in which the existing experiences were described and shown to the students in the classroom at FCTUC through a virtual visit done by Skype for sound and by video connection through a 2-axis moving IP camera mounted in the laboratory at FEUP.The experiences, the respective data acquisition and control software applications and the booking process were presented and explained in detail during that remote session.After it, written material containing the instructions for booking and accessing the experiences, the description of experiments and the respective theoretical formulation where made available to students through the Web on Campus internet platform at FCTUC.Each student was asked to carry out one of the three selected experiments and, finally, to write a report about it.The remote access experiment weighed 10% on the final grade of each student.The final grade was calculated with the sum of the grades obtained on two written tests (2 x 6 on a 20 points scale) and the reports of 3 experimental works (3+3+2), the first two carried out at the laboratories at FCTUC and the last one being the remote access experiment.During the period of remote access the students from FCTUC have been free to get help at FEUP, using the first author email whenever they needed.In that sense it was also an interesting interactive experience.
In the next section a short description of the remote experiments as well as their pedagogical scope will be provided.

SHORT TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION AND PEDAGOGICAL SCOPE Mechanical Material Characterization
A particular set-up for remotely measuring and determining mechanical material properties is now briefly presented (Restivo, 2009).A cantilever beam instrumented with resistance strain gauges is loaded by a linear motor.In series with the linear motor a miniature load cell is used for measuring the applied load.The system may be used remotely for automatically measuring force, strain and deflection and it may also be actuated in a manual mode for monitoring the cantilever beam system performance for any value of the applied load, within its working range.The application for remote access is developed in LabVIEW 7.1.Figure 1 shows the user interface available for remote actuation.On the upper right corner a real time video provides real system visualization.Underneath the video window a picture of the overall system offers a realistic perspective of the complete setup.
The future integration of a low cost haptic device with this setup will provide the user with force feedback, supplying a highly realistic actuation of the remote experimental system.Once an email address is introduced on the remotely accessible user interface the user will get a message with the results at the end of the experiment.This remote experiment brings the following pedagogical scopes: • For those students who are familiar with a common hands-on procedure for determining Young modulus using a cantilever beam in a bending test, this system offers a complete automated method through which they may replicate the Young modulus determination of a material; • In this particular case a miniaturized spoked wheel type load cell is used for providing the applied load, in a completely different way from suspending weights at the free end of a cantilever beam; • Simultaneously, the measured deflection may be compared with the one analytically determined; • The values found for the Young modulus may present some variability that can be explored; • The deformed shape along the neutral axis is also displayed during the automated mode for the three applied load levels; • Along all this task each student has the chance to develop individual skills for dealing with experimental problems, which is generally not the case in the normal practice during real hands-on sessions performed on a workgroup basis; • The student also becomes familiar with the use of these new technologies.
A simple upgrade (a new measurement bridge and two resistance strain gauges) will make available the evaluation of the Poisson ratio of the material.

System for straightness evaluation
The straightness evaluation system uses a digital gauge moved by a linear motor through a timing belt element, communicating with the PC by an RS232 interface.Two switches, of electromagnetic reed type, are used as security limits for the range measuring length.The software package LabVIEW 7.1, running on a PC with I/O cards, provides remote system supervision and control.
The user may define the range for straightness evaluation along a straight line segment included between the above mentioned limits.He may also define the step value of the digital dial test indicator as well as the number of tests to be performed.Figure 2 shows the remote user interface, integrating live video from an IP camera.Once an email address is introduced on the remotely accessible user interface the user will get a message with the experimental data.This remote experiment includes the following pedagogical scopes: • The straightness deviation of a given line is a normalized and abstract concept and its demonstration was never done during the course.So, the system permits the materialization of this concept; • The final objective of the system is to determine the straightness deviation value; • The system exhibits a totally automated method for performing that measurement; • Once the number of tests can be chosen by the user, statistical analysis may be carried out; • The development of individual skills are facilitated; • The student will become also familiar with the use of these new technologies.
In both experiments a booking system developed at FEUP, as an extension of the Moodle platform, is used for organizing the user remote access to them.If the user does not arrive within a pre-defined tolerance period, the Moodle extension will free the previously booked time slot.The use of the Moodle platform brings additional advantages for storing tutorials on the subjects.course design; the access to a very particular system or to a sophisticated one can be turned into reality with remote technology; finally, the use of remote experiments may improve students' autonomy, in accordance with Bologna philosophy (Samoila, 2007).
Meanwhile, FEUP has been concerned in evaluating the pedagogical efficiency of on-line labs in engineering courses.Staff from the schools of Education Science and Engineering have been working together to attain this goal, the main scope of the project Labs-on-the-Web (http://www.fe.up.pt/si/PROJECTOS_GERAL.MOSTRA_PROJECTO?P_ID=1105).
An inquiry including 26 different items has been designed.The authors of this work have selected seven of them considered more relevant and the results are presented in the following section.

STUDENT COMMENTS
The student sample was of 26.For each question in the inquiry, the student had to select the adequate grade from very bad (1) to excellent (7).The percentage of good (5), very good (6) and excellent (7) answers will be considered together and used as an indication of the evaluation level.Rates over 75% will be consider as very positive evaluation indicators.The selected answers are summarized in table 1. Free comments Some comments were related with technical constrains such as the slot time duration for each experiment, the browser imposed by the used software, the firewall problems, the perception (or not) of the system real scale.
But others are as follows: -Carry-on with this important work!-An initiative to be followed by other universities.
-The reduced interaction between the user and all the equipment can be not so impressive.But, the possibility of accessing the experiments from anywhere, anytime, is a big step!-All the problems were promptly solved by the FEUP team.

FINAL COMMENTS
The authors consider these results as very positive giving confidence for other future explorations.The authors believe in its complementary contribution for the Universities, their staff and students.Intensifying collaborations as this one will bring other additional cooperation, which could bring unquestionable advantages for the development of many other works either related with higher education or in the R&D&I fields.

Table 1 -
Analysis of some questions