A Remote and Virtual Lab with Experiments for Secondary Education, Engineering and Lifelong Learning Courses

Abstract

The Information and Communication Technology tools are nowadays invaluable to support e-learning and b-learning programs. The Remote and Virtual Laboratory in development at the Department of Informatics Engineering of the University of Coimbra (Portugal), RVL@DEI-UC, is a web-based platform that allows users to perform a large set of experiments in different areas and contexts, such as in education or training. This paper aims to describe the inherent potential of this platform in secondary education, engineering and lifelong learning courses. The conceptualization, architecture and implementation of the web platform for real and virtual experiments, which is remotely accessed using the Internet, are presented and the relevance of the labâ??s integration in an intelligent tutoring system is also highlighted, mainly in what regards the requirements of adaptation and customization to different usersâ?? profile in different learning contexts.