Content-rich interactive online laboratory systems

Online learning environments are rapidly becoming viable options for offering students a bridge from theoretical concepts to practical engineering applications. They represent collections of integrated tools that provide a delivery mechanism for rich learning content, advanced assessment capabilities as well as affordable access to a wide range of educational resources. Such online learning environments have been used at Stevens Institute of Technology (SIT) for a number of years to provide undergraduate engineering students with a comprehensive laboratory experience based on content-rich and flexible remote and virtual laboratory experiments. These Web-based educational tools were developed using various open source programming languages and free software applications. As discussed in this article, these open source components form a powerful combination for the cost-efficient development, implementation and sharing of Web-based virtual experimentation systems. This article describes the delivery methods for online experiments and the corresponding software modules implemented, which were integrated into a comprehensive student laboratory experience currently being used at SIT in a sophomore-level core undergraduate course on solid mechanics taken by all undergraduate engineering majors as well as in a junior-level course on mechanisms and machine dynamics for mechanical engineering majors. Furthermore, some results of the learning outcomes assessment for online experiments conducted over several years at SIT are summarized.