Learning Management Systems as a platform for deployment of remote and virtual laboratory environments

Abstract

The constant development in ICT has not omitted the field of learning activities, digitalizing the concept of learning and making it more effective. This became even more obvious during the Covid-19 Pandemic when all educational activities were forced to be transferred remotely and online, with the help of existing Learning Management Systems. Motivated by this, the paper focuses on reviewing different LMSs and comparing their capabilities towards implementation of remote and virtual laboratories, providing analytical and empirical investigations. The goal is to assess the possibility of implementation and deployment of remote access, firstly to some existing on-campus laboratories hosting lab exercises based on real hardware; and secondly to virtual software platforms also usually available in the laboratories. Using such a set up enables the students to get the look and feel of what it means to be in presence in a real lab, nevertheless virtually. This immersive remote lab experience shall hereby be integrated into an already existing and widely used LMS for better operability and manageability. This work has been done in the course of the European project UbiLab (”A ubiquitous virtual laboratory framework”), conducted jointly between the Ss. Cyrill and Methodius University in Skopje, North Macedonia, Anhalt University, Koethen, Germany, and University of Maribor, Slovenia. In the course of the project a remote collaboration platform for hardware-in-the loop will be developed and deployed, and at the same time learning experience in using it in the course of the education process of electrical, system automation, and computer engineers shall be gathered. As an outcome of the work done, it was found that there is no ready-made solution for carrying out remote laboratory work that completely covers the goals ofthe UbiLab project. Thus, a custom solution based on the compilation of listed platforms components should be developed.