Abstract:

Practical training remains pivotal in higher education of science and engineering, facilitating the acquisition of indispensable skills and professional capabilities crucial for career success. Amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, educators encountered substantial hurdles in providing a comprehensive learning experience. Lab-based modules, in particular, posed formidable challenges in transitioning to a solely digital environment.

This presentation aims to propose a solution by leveraging remote lab experiments, specifically the Extended Reality Twin Lab framework (XRTL), an open-source toolbox tailored for educators. It facilitates the creation of remote-accessible scientific experiments, encompassing automation of setups, communication infrastructure, and an immersive user interface.

The primary objective is to digitalize existing educational experiments and translate core learning goals into a remote controllable setting. Notably, simulated experiments alone are deemed inadequate in familiarizing students with essential aspects of lab work, such as statistical errors and uncertainties. Conversely, remote experiments controlling real-life setups can effectively bridge these educational gaps.

Many existing remote lab approaches tend to rely on specialized solutions tailored for singular setups. Addressing this limitation, XRTL provides high adaptability and a modular architecture, enabling its utilization across diverse experimental tasks in various scientific fields. Using a low-cost do-it-yourself design, XRTL is suitable not only for high-budget institutions but also offers an opportunity for smaller teaching programs to improve their distance learning capabilities. In contrast to other remote labs constrained by preset parameters and predictable outcomes, our approach fosters student engagement by offering a wide range of manipulable variables. This intentional design encourages experimentation, providing space for exploration, and embraces errors as learning opportunities, enriching the educational experience.

Additionally, this contribution will elucidate the feasible tasks and prerequisites for successful XRTL implementation, exemplified through an optical experiment already used by photonics students in our lab course. Finally, the presentation plans to include an interactive live demonstration of our XRTL Showcase experiment.

Keywords:

Remote Lab, Distance Learning, DIY, Low Cost, Open Source, Higher Education, Extended Reality (XR), AR, VR.