Internet Accessible Remote Laboratories: Scalable E-Learning Tools for Engineering and Science Disciplines

Limited resources and other factors pose major challenges for engineering, technology, and science educators’ ability to provide adequate laboratory experience for students. An Internet accessible remote laboratory, which is an arrangement that allows laboratory equipment to be controlled remotely, addresses these difficulties and allows more efficient laboratory management. Internet Accessible Remote Laboratories: Scalable E-Learning Tools for Engineering and Science Disciplines collects current developments in the multidisciplinary creation of Internet accessible remote laboratories. This book offers perspectives on teaching with online laboratories, pedagogical design, system architectures for remote laboratories, future trends, and policy issues in the use of remote laboratories. It is useful resource for graduate and undergraduate students in electrical and computer engineering and computer science programs, as well as researchers who are interested in learning more about the current status of the field, as well as various approaches to remote laboratory design.

Abul K. M. Azad is a Professor with the Technology Department of Northern Illinois University. He has a Ph.D. in Control and Systems Engineering and M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Electronics Engineering. He has been in academics for 15+ years and his research interests include remote laboratories, mechatronic systems, adaptive/intelligent control, mobile robotics and educational research. In these areas, Dr. Azad has over 100 refereed journal and conference papers, edited books and book chapters. So far, he has attracted around $1.5M of research and development grants from various national and international funding agencies. He is a member of the editorial board for a number of professional journals as well as the Associate Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Online Engineering. He is active with various professional organizations and has served as Chair and Co-Chairs of numerous conferences and workshops, in addition to serving on the program committees of around 30 international conferences. He is a senior member of IEEE and ISA and a member of ASEE, IET and CLAWAR.

Michael E. Auer has, since 1995, been Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Systems Engineering Department of the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences Villach, Austria and has also teaching positions at the Universities of Klagenfurt (Austria), Amman (Jordan), Brasov (Romania) and Patras (Greece). He is a senior member of IEEE and member of VDE, IGIP, et cetera, author or co-author of more than 170 publications and leading member of numerous national and international organizations in the field of online technologies. He is founder and chair of the annual international ICL and REV conferences and chair or member of the program committees of several international conferences and workshops. He is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journals of Online Engineering(iJOE), Emerging Technologies in Learning(iJET) and Interactive Mobile Technologies(iJIM). Michael Auer is Founding-President and CEO of the "International Association of Online Engineering" (IAOE) since 2006, a non-governmental organization that promotes the vision of new engineering working environments worldwide. In September 2010 he was elected as President of the "International Society of Engineering Education"(IGIP). Furthermore he is a member of the Advisory Board of the "European Learning Industry Group" (ELIG).

V. Judson Harward is Principal Research Scientist and Associate Director at MIT's Center for Educational Computing Initiatives. He has served as Software Architect and Project Manager for the iLab Shared Architecture for the past eight years. He is currently co-Principal Investigator of the iLab-Africa project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and acts as President and Chair of the Technical Committee of the Global Online Laboratory Consortium. He co-teaches one of the large undergraduate computing courses at MIT and his research interests include service-oriented architecture design and distributed multimedia.