Implementation of an interactive virtual microscope laboratory system in teaching oral histopathology

The use of virtual laboratory systems has become a modern trend in many areas of human activity. Modern networked virtual laboratories use virtual reality technology to implement laboratory simulations and interactive environment technology to control simulations. The work examines the advantages, principles of building a virtual laboratory and existing problems in the communication mechanism. In particular, when exchanging data between node machines in a network virtual laboratory system, the network layer cannot ensure the same transmission of packet data. The article reviews modern methods of machine learning: supervised, unsupervised, semi-supervised and reinforcement learning. It was determined that the main characteristics of the virtual laboratory system architecture are openness, modularity and real-time communication. The communication mechanism of the virtual laboratory system does not meet the requirements of high bandwidth and real-time two-way communication. To solve the problem of technical requirements of high throughput and ultra-low delay of the virtual laboratory system, a communication planning technology based on a deep machine learning algorithm is proposed. The work uses the Socket mechanism to implement communication based on the TCP/IP protocol. In accordance with the technical requirements of high throughput and ultra-low latency of the network system of the virtual experiment, a technology of self-tuning and optimal planning of the communication network based on the deep machine learning algorithm is proposed. The proposed technology makes it possible to make the optimal decision regarding resource planning and implement optimization of the indirect selection of system parameters.

Development and Implementation of Interactive Virtual Laboratories to Help Students Learn Threshold Concepts in Thermodynamics – Year 2Thermodynamics is a difficult subject for chemical and biological engineering students to master. Onereason for the difficulty is the diverse and challenging set of threshold concepts that they must coherentlysynthesize and be able to apply in a diverse range of contexts. Based on our experience and from reportsin the literature, we have identified a set of six threshold concepts we propose are critical for mastery ofthermodynamics. The goal of this TUES project is to develop a corresponding set of Interactive VirtualLaboratories to help students identify and learn these six threshold concepts. The intent of this project isnot to develop a comprehensive list of all the threshold concepts needed to master thermodynamics.Rather we would like to examine a subset of threshold concepts and illustrate, first, that they can form adesign basis for development of Interactive Virtual Laboratories where students can actively experiencemultiple representations, and, second, that experience with these virtual laboratories helps students learn.The following specific project objectives have been constructed to achieve this goal: 1. Validate a set of six proposed threshold concepts in thermodynamics. 2. Develop Interactive Virtual Laboratories to provide students multiple representations and help them experientially explore these threshold concepts. Develop the virtual laboratories based on engineering education best practices and multimedia development principles to provide students structured engagement, such as incorporating the “predict, observe, explain” technique. 3. Deliver the Interactive Virtual Laboratories in classes using the studio architecture recently implemented at the home institution. 4. Assess the perception and effectiveness of the Interactive Virtual Laboratories through a. Classroom observation, student surveys, and instructor and student focus groups b. Measurement of learning gains on the Throttling Valve question and the Technician question, two conceptual questions that have been historically difficult for students 5. Incorporate the Interactive Virtual Laboratories as resources in the AIChE Concept Warehouse so that they are broadly available for engineering and science instructors to use.Year 2 progress will be reported including the following: Nine Interactive Virtual Laboratories have beendeveloped based on best practices in engineering education pedagogy and sound multimedia developmentprinciples. They are available to the engineering community through integration into the AIChE ConceptWarehouse, another NSF supported project. Five laboratories have been implemented in twothermodynamics studio classes. They have been delivered both in class and for homework. An analysis ofthe content of student responses allows identification of concepts they struggle with as well asopportunities for further development of the Interactive Virtual Laboratories. Student perceptions of theInteractive Virtual Laboratories including comparison between the two modes of delivery is reported.

Laboratory courses play a pivotal role in higher education, and with emerging technologies transforming instructional practices, virtual laboratories have become an effective supplement to traditional, face-to-face settings. This paper presents a Unity3D-based virtual production line laboratory platform developed under the ADDIE instructional design model (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation). The physical assembly line was replicated in a virtual environment and deployed via WebGL on a custom website, enabling students to engage in experimental learning at any time.Additionally,On the student client, we have visualised PLC programs and designed an image recognition module that enables students to visually verify the correctness of their PLC programs. Implementation with second-year undergraduates demonstrated positive impacts on academic performance.

Association of Health Sciences Reasoning Test Scores With Academic and Experiential Performance

The rapid transition to remote teaching in the spring of 2020 posed particular challenges for laboratory courses, which often involve students working hands-on with equipment in collaborative environments. Replicating in-person experiments was especially challenging for advanced lab courses that utilize specialized apparatus, which could not be accessed by students at home. However, physics lab instructors employed a variety of creative strategies to overcome these barriers and provide students access to lab-like learning in a remote setting. We report on one advanced lab course that used the transition to remote teaching to completely redefine the course goals and transition from traditional prescriptive labs to more open-ended projects. We conduct a case study analysis, triangulating among several data sources-survey responses and interviews from both instructor and students-to construct an in-depth understanding of the remote course and how students experienced it. Although we cannot necessarily generalize the results of this analysis to the entire student experience in the course due to the student response rate, the feedback that the course did receive from both students and the instructor was overwhelmingly positive, and the instructors are planning to retain the open-ended projects when the course returns to an in-person format. We find that the new open-ended projects afforded students opportunities to make decisions and think deeply about their experiments, which students report as contributing to their enjoyment and satisfaction with the course. Students had mixed group work experiences, with some describing positive and meaningful interactions and others describing group work as a source of frustration and stress. Additionally, some students missed being able to work hands-on with equipment, and some reported a high workload that made the course stressful. We discuss these student experiences and provide implications for both in-person and remote lab courses.

This paper describes a practical case study on the benefits and feasibility of a virtual laboratory as a part of chemistry laboratory exercises. Three different objectives that must fit together to create an efficient Virtual Reality (VR) learning experience were found: relevant information content, learning design, and technical feasibility. To achieve these multidisciplinary goals, a simple framework for designing VR learning materials was created. A 360-VR version of a chemistry laboratory exercise was designed and created following this framework. Data on its effectiveness was collected on a laboratory course with over 150 first-year chemical engineering students. The students completed the same laboratory exercise both as a virtual laboratory and in a real student laboratory. In the student feedback, students clearly stated that virtual laboratories cannot replace the experience in a real laboratory, and that the virtual laboratory exercises did not directly increase student motivation. Nevertheless, students showed a very positive attitude towards virtual learning materials and suggested including even more activating materials such as quizzes and interactive videos in the learning materials. Only a few students reported any downsides related to the virtual laboratory exercise. Overall, it was shown that our design principles work in practice as the students reported several real benefits when they completed a virtual laboratory exercise before the real-life laboratory exercise. These benefits included learning the correct way that the laboratory exercise proceeds and how to perform certain tasks correctly.

Covid-19 Pandemic has changed our education system, especially on practicum activity. This study aims at developing a virtual laboratory system using EWB and Zoom Cloud applications in a valid, practical and effective dynamic electricity practicum as a practical solution during the Covid-19 pandemic. The method used in this study is a modified Research and Development (R&D) method consisting of identification of potential and problems, data collection, data for development, product design (draft I), validation, design revision, draft II, limited scale trial, product revision 1, draft III, broad-scale trial, product revision 2, and the final product. The trial sample in this study was class X students of SMK Negeri 2 Kendari in the Electrical Power Installation Engineering department the eligibility criteria with an internal consistency coefficient of 0.92 for the material and 0.84 for the media. After going through a validation test, the product developed is then tested on a limited and wide scale. From the results of trials on a limited scale, is was obtained that regarding the practicality value of the product 54.55% students’ responded “very support” and the rest 45.45% responded “support”, while in a large-scale trial of 77.50% students agreed on "very support” response, and 22.50% gave a “support” response. The effectiveness of the product is seen from the student's response and the classical completeness score where 100% of the students gained a practicum score of >75. Therefore, it can be concluded that Virtual Laboratory can be utilized as a learning solution during the COVID-19 pandemic at SMK Negeri 2 Kendari.

Automatic evaluation is a challenging field that has been addressed by the academic community in order to reduce the assessment workload. In this work we present a new element for the authoring tool Easy Java Simulations (EJS). This element, which is named automatic evaluation element (AEE), provides automatic evaluation to virtual and remote laboratories built with EJS by using the server application Goodle grading management system (GMS). The integration of both tools entitles a professor to create interactive virtual and remote laboratories and automatically evaluate the work of their students. As a test bed two case studies are presented; a non-linear controller design virtual laboratory used in an advanced control master course and a servomechanism virtual laboratory used in an undergraduate basic control course.

This study is an implementation of information technology for education, aimed to produce a model of online lab course with a collaborative environment using a desktop sharing application. In the digital electronics lab course, participants were divided into the groups, each of them consists of three members. A desktop sharing application was used to the digital circuit simulator as an offline program that can be accessed online. The results show that the application can be used to introduce a collaborative environment in an online lab course. The application was possible to make an offline program such of a digital circuit simulator that can be accessed online by each member of the groups. This model has got a positive response from the participants of digital electronics lab course.

Traditional classroom teaching practices often lacks the active engagement of students in the class. Performing experiment in the laboratory is one of the most effective methods for getting deep knowledge in chemistry. But sometimes listening theory lectures and performing related experiments in the laboratory does not helps the students to understand the concepts clearly, as this lacks repeatability and visualization of concepts. Induction of virtual laboratory in combination with theory lectures and physical laboratory could solve this problem. Virtual laboratory have multi-faceted advantages such as repetitive performance, easy to handle simulations and remote triggered experimentations. Such remote triggered laboratories found to enhance students' academic performance as it enables them to perform anytime-anywhere. In this paper, we report our observations regarding the use of virtual laboratory experiments in chemistry subject and their role in enhancing First Year B. Tech. engineering students' performance when induced as a blended classroom. UV-Visible spectrophotometry experiment was performed to verify the usefulness of virtual laboratory from student's knowledge perspective. The effect of a blended learning approach was carefully studied and evaluated in comparison with traditional classroom teaching and virtual laboratory. Our study reveals the enhancement of student's performance in a blended learning environment compared to just physical performance in the laboratory and performing individually with the virtual laboratory.

The world is continuously suffering due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Online learning was implemented by the Philippine government which brought a serious problem in teaching science courses that requires conducting experiments in a laboratory facility. Thirty-six (36) Laguna University Science major students under the Bachelor of Secondary Education Program were selected as respondents in this study. The students' scores in the pre-test and post-test on plant and animal physiology were analyzed. The purpose of the Quasi-experimental research design was to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention, Virtual Laboratory, as a learning tool for Anatomy and Physiology Course. Laboratory worksheets and modules were used to test the level of proficiency of the respondents in the pre-intervention stage. To alleviate the difficulty, a virtual laboratory in Anatomy and Physiology course was designed by the researchers. This laboratory was utilized by the respondents before answering the post-test worksheets. An Independent T-test was utilized to determine if there is a significant difference in the test scores before and after the intervention. A survey tool was used to gather data on students' perception on the effectiveness of the virtual laboratory. Based on the results, the virtual laboratory was an effective learning tool that improved students' academic performance in the Anatomy and Physiology course. Results showed that it reduced the time needed to understand the concepts within a topic and helped enhance the quality of the learning process. Therefore, this tool maybe adopted in other experimental-based science subjects.

For enhanced education at the level of University courses such as those in biology or biotechnology, one of the key elements is the need of time and expertise to allow the student to familiarize laboratory techniques in par with regular theory. The Sakshat Amrita virtual biotechnology lab project focusing on virtualizing wet-lab techniques and integrating the learning experience has added a new dimension to the regular teaching courses at the University. Establishing virtual labs requires both domain knowledge and virtualizing skills via programming, animation and device-based feedback. Challenges in the biotechnology sector in setting up a laboratory that integrates both the feel and phenomenon includes the medley of multiple techniques. This paper reports one such cost-effective process used in virtualizing a real biotechnology lab at the University-level. The major challenge in setting up an effective knowledge dissemination for laboratory courses was not only the scientific approach of biotechnology, but included the virtualization aspects such as usage/design scalability, deliverability efficiency, network connectivity issues, security and speed of adaptability to incorporate and update changes into existing experiments. This paper also discusses an issue-specific case-study of a functional virtual lab in biotechnology and its many issues and challenges.

A new remote laboratory system for learning hardware design and experiment of digital circuit has been developed. It employs shared resources and an e-learning system based on the top-down method specializing in the logic circuit design and featuring a quick acquisition of the hardware-description-language-based design skill. The wide use of the Internet motivated us to develop seamless remote and actual hardware laboratories for hardware design laboratory course, and for students to learn the digital circuit design by themselves. The proposed remote laboratory utilizes actual hardware and actual measurement tools in a time-sharing fashion. The combinatorial use of FPGA/PC connected test hardware and PC-based measurement equipments has made it possible to develop a remote multi-user and time-sharing hardware experiment system. As all students are equipped with high-performance Laptop PCs, CPU intensive development tasks can be performed by each student's client PC in a rich-client environment. The prototype the remote-laboratory and self e-learning system are under-construction, and will be used for the third grade CS students from year 2005

At the universities of Dresden, Vienna, and Zagreb, a laboratory course for prospective physics teachers was transferred to an online environment because of the lockdown in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this paper is to present and compare students’ and instructors’ considerations about the experiences with this laboratory course at these three universities and to formulate guidelines for organizing lab courses for prospective physics teachers. The research was conducted in three steps: first, interviews were conducted with prospective physics teachers (N = 10); second, an online questionnaire was administered to course participants (N = 99); and third, lab course instructors completed an online questionnaire (N = 8). The results show that an increase in creativity and confidence was expressed when conducting home experiments. Students who received support and guidance benefited more from the online lab course, but some students also experienced a greater time commitment. On a positive note, all participants thought outside-the-box during this lab experience and found solutions that led to new ways of conducting labs. Our study suggests that in future online or regular lab courses, students should have the chance to make decisions about experiments and be creative, with an emphasis on peer discussions and support from instructors.

Electronic laboratory courses offer the possibility to introduce some specific and transversal skills to the curriculum of the students who follow an engineering degree. This paper examines the methodology and assessment which are applied in the laboratory course of the subject "Electronic Systems" in the second year course in the Telecommunication Engineering degree from the Castelldefels School of Technologyy (Escola Politècnica Superior de Castelldefels, EPSC) at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). During 14 laboratory weekly sessions of 2 h, students must analyze and design the analog and digital circuitry for an ultrasound-based distance measurement system, by means of several guided practices. Small groups of two or three students worked on a collaborative way, while the teacher acted as a guide to facilitate project comprehension and knowledge acquisition. The experience we describe corresponds to the Spring term of 2009, a period in which this methodology was applied to two small class groups of about 23 and 7 students respectively. This work studies the influence of the initial characteristics of the students and their time devoted to prepare the subject, on their academic performance. The paper finishes with a list of recommendations in order to improve students learning process and course assessment.