Online laboratories have been widely used in education, research, and industrial applications. For online laboratories, various architectures have been constructed to provide good user experience and powerful capabilities for online experimentation, in which the controller is a crucial part to connect the server with a controlled test rig.…

For educational institutions in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) areas, the provision of practical learning scenarios is, traditionally, a major concern. In the 21st century, the explosion of information and communication technology (ICTs), as well as the universalization of low-cost hardware, has allowed the proliferation…

A smart campus provides students who are geographically scattered with online tools to get access to learning resources and laboratories. Although these remote laboratories have the potential and capabilities to implement different learning experiments, most of them are configured in a static fashion, being able to serve only one experiment for a…

In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, Industry 4.0 stands as a monumental revolution that intertwines man and machine, reshaping the dynamics of labor and work environments. This paradigm shift demands a new outlook and necessitates a fresh set of skills and competencies to navigate the intricate web of advancements. From engineers to…

Researchers and teachers around the world have created newsoftware and hardware to develop, reuse, and deploy online laboratories (labs). However, due to the nature of labs, most of the available solutions depend greatly on where and how online labs can be used in the first place. Thus, there have been multiple design solutions and great…

In conventional laboratories, engineering students must attend in person to conduct experiments with real equipment in a physical place, where their work is mainly assessed through self-reports and attendance records. By comparison, online labs can record and analyze students' activities and behaviors automatically. Thus, this article proposes a…

3D-printing (3DP) is a rapidly evolving sector and is advancing at an unmatched pace. Integrating digital-based approaches to disseminate knowledge within institutional curricula is crucial for mainstreaming knowledge. This work explores the development of a virtual lab (VL) for additive manufacturing (AM), using an interactive VL simulator. The…

This study presents a monocular approach for capturing students' prototyping activities and interactions in digital-fabrication-based makerspaces. The proposed method uses images from a single camera and applies object reidentification, tracking, and depth estimation algorithms to track and uniquely label participants in the space, extracting both…

The designs of many student-facing learning analytics (SFLA) dashboards are insufficiently informed by educational research and lack rigorous evaluation in authentic learning contexts, including during remote laboratory practical work. In this article, we present and evaluate an SFLA dashboard designed using the principles of formative assessment…

Laboratory experience is an integral part of the undergraduate curriculum in most engineering courses. When physical learning is not feasible, and when the demand cannot be met through actual hands-on laboratory sessions, as has been during the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual laboratory courses can be considered as an alternative education medium. This…

The Internet-of-Things (IoT) is a collection of technologies to bring the Internet to physically embedded devices and to embed them deeply into human activities to aid in a variety of activities. IoT gained traction with developers and consumers in recent years, driven by low-cost open-source hardware that enables easy prototyping and testing. IoT…

This article introduces a novel approach to remote laboratory instruction, specifically designed for teaching three-dimensional modeling using Blender software. The lab uses virtual machines to provide students with the necessary computational power to carry out the course activities, along with the correct version of the software. The flipped…

Raspberry Pi Pico, based on chip RP2040, is an easy-to-use development microcontroller board that can provide flexible input/output functions and meets the teaching needs of basic electronics to first-year university undergraduates. This article presents our blended laboratory design using Raspberry Pi Pico for the course unit Digital Circuits and…

With the abrupt nationwide lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, many universities suspended face-to-face activities. Some of them decided to continue their academic courses, adapting traditional approaches to online learning. An important challenge was to deliver programming labs over the Internet without important methodological changes,…

The use of practical laboratories is a key in engineering education in order to provide our students with the resources needed to acquire practical skills. This is specially true in the case of distance education, where no physical interactions between lecturers and students take place, so virtual or remote laboratories must be used. UNED has…