Education in the Knowledge Society 23 (2022)

The Educational Benefit of a Remote Automatic Control Laboratory. A Win-Win Collaboration between Asia and Europe

Beneficio educativo de un Laboratorio de Control Automático Remoto. Una colaboración beneficiosa para todos entre Asia y Europa

Maria Giulia Ballatore^a*, Valentino Razza^b, Diego Regruto^c, Igor S. Stievano^d, Anita Tabacco^e

^aDepartment of Mathematical Sciences, Politecnico di Torino, Italy

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6216-8939maria.ballatore@polito.it

^b Department of Control and Computer Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Italy

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0137-8745valentino.razza@polito.it

^c Department of Control and Computer Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Italy

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2144-2786diego.regruto@polito.it

^d Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, Politecnico di Torino, Italy

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7287-7360igor.stievano@polito.it

^e Department of Mathematical Sciences, Politecnico di Torino, Italy

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5731-4885anita.tabacco@polito.it

(*) Corresponding Author

ABSTRACT

This project aims to implement a Remote European Asian Lab, an Automatic Control remote laboratory, in the joint academic cooperation framework between two universities located in Europe and Central Asia. Emphasis is given to the inclusive solution of a shared teaching facility and its learning achievements in a bachelor course (Uzbekistan) and a master course (Italy) to foresee a better education quality. The different cultural and social contexts allow (a) the evaluation of the effect obtained by introducing a remote laboratory experience in a course entirely theoretical, and (b) the shift from a physical laboratories experience to a remote one. Students are first introduced to this laboratory by the lecturer in dedicated classes. Then students can independently access it 24/7 by simply booking a specific station for a time slot. From the analysis comes out that remote laboratory experiences positively impact learning achievements. The benefits of the remote environment are perfectly comparable with those obtained from physical laboratory activities.

Keywords
inclusion, remote lab, shared facilities, laboratory education

RESUMEN

Este proyecto tiene como objetivo implementar un laboratorio remoto de Control Automático en el marco de cooperación académica conjunta entre dos universidades ubicadas en Europa y Asia Central. Se hace hincapié en la solución inclusiva de una instalación de enseñanza compartida y sus logros de aprendizaje en un curso de licenciatura (Uzbekistán) y en un curso de maestría (Italia) para proveer una mejor calidad de la educación. Los diferentes contextos culturales y sociales permiten (a) la evaluación del efecto obtenido al introducir una experiencia de laboratorio remoto en un curso totalmente teórico, y (b) el paso de una experiencia de laboratorio físico a una remota. Los estudiantes son introducidos por el profesor en este laboratorio por primera vez en clases dedicadas. Luego, los estudiantes pueden acceder de forma independiente las 24 horas del día, los 7 días de la semana, simplemente reservando una estación específica durante un intervalo de tiempo. Del análisis se desprende que las experiencias del laboratorio remoto impactan positivamente en los logros de aprendizaje. Los beneficios del entorno remoto son perfectamente comparables a los que se obtienen de las actividades físicas del laboratorio.

Palabras clave
inclusión, laboratorio remoto, instalaciones compartidas, educación de laboratorio

1. Introduction

In the last two decades, different remote laboratories' experiences have been put in place worldwide. In Almarshoud (2011), the authors reviewed 21 experiences belonging to all specialisation areas in electrical engineering (electronics, communication, power systems, electrical machines, automatic control, power electronics and computer engineering). These laboratories around the world use a variety of hardware and software solutions (Lima et al., 2017). Some of these technical aspects have been shared among the community to introduce standard procedures like the VISIR (Lima et al., 2019, Tawfik et al., 2013, Viegas et al., 2018). Others tried to foster open tools to quickly create virtual and remote laboratories (de la Torre et al., 2013). To implement these technologies, several factors need to be considered regarding the adoption (such as cost and space) and the educational side (for example, the effort to integrate the curricula and trained technicians). The cost of equipment is strongly related to the educational purpose of the laboratory. To allow the shift from physical use to a virtual or remote one, the cost of additional facilities and infrastructure is not negligible. A possibility is to share facilities between different institutions to reduce this economic limitation and act more sustainably (Alves et al., 2018; Bonnaud et al., 2008). However, this requires a clearly stated education purpose among the consortium. Regarding the software, a platform equipment-independent has also been developed with a particular focus on collaborative features (Bochicchio and Longo, 2009). As a matter of fact, all the experiments that require a piece of equipment locally controlled by a computer are perfect for the virtual application. However, it is essential to underline the difference between virtual and remote. The latter is characterised by an experiment run in a physical laboratory but executed and controlled from a different location through an interface. Therefore, live interactions are vital aspects. The more students can intervene, alter, and receive visual feedback, the more the experience would be engaging and valuable (Axaopoulos et al., 2012). This remote experience has been found to be as successful as conducting experiments in a real lab (Lang et al., 2007). However, some aspects must be considered to achieve an effective learning environment. For example, in Lal et al. (2020), the authors found out that the instruction sheet is fundamental, and it needs to be carefully designed to give students the feeling of operating in actual equipment. The supervisor's role and knowledge of remote environments play a unique position in the students' learning meta-cognition (Marques et al., 2014). Another way to directly support students is to include theoretical contents that students can read and consult in a remote environment while conducting the activities (Fraile-Ardanuy et al., 2013). In Luthon et al. (2015), gamified training is created to keep a high engagement level, while other papers strongly suggest using webcams and recorders to receive live feedback (Axaopoulos et al., 2012; Bochicchio and Longo, 2009). The remote laboratories can also be used as a prior experience for an actual laboratory activity, like a pre-lab to familiarise with the instruments (Barros et al., 2008), or to finish at home an experiment run in class, for example, for filling reports (Sousa et al., 2010).

Inclusion is another feature that characterises many remote laboratories where the facilities' geographical location does not need to coincide with the users' site. Therefore, the equipment can be shared on a national (Lowe et al., 2015; Pradarelli et al., 2009) or global (Bonnaud et al., 2008; Qiao et al., 2010) scale with a breakdown of costs. Moreover, thanks to the different time zone (for example, between Australia and Europe), students worldwide can be run experiments 24/7 (Ku et al., 2011). This international cooperation on technical features needs to accommodate the cultural and social differences to improve teaching effectiveness significantly. This share of facilities includes considerations on the adoption itself. Apart from the development and the maintenance, one should consider the scalability constraints that include, in a hierarchical order, (i) experiment, (ii) laboratory, (iii) course, (iv) degree, (v) school, (vi) institution (Alves et al., 2018).

In general, remote laboratories positively affect students' learning process like the real laboratories' experiences (Garcia-Zubia et al., 2017). Keeping in mind all the features just described and the theoretical framework presented in (Tirado-Morueta et al., 2018), the structure and the methodology of an Automatic Control course have been revised. Related to this subject, the same lecturers deliver similar courses in Italy at Politecnico di Torino (PoliTo) and in Uzbekistan at Turin Polytechnic University in Tashkent (TTPU). The proposed revision paves the way for direct improvements in students' ability to solve real-world/practical control problems with trial-and-error methods. An already existing laboratory at PoliTo has been modified into a remote lab to make the students learning more tailored, reducing the building time and the related costs. This remote environment is called REAL (Remote European Asian Lab).

This paper presents how the REAL inclusive solution impacted students' learning in two different contexts. The research question turns out to be: Can different educational and social contexts share a laboratory facility to achieve a better education quality in an Automatic Control course? In particular, it will be evaluated the effect obtained by developing a remote laboratory in two directions: (a) the Uzbekistan reality in which the introduction of REAL was a novelty as the Automatic Control course was entirely theoretical, and (b) the Italian reality where there has been a shift from a physical laboratories experience to a remote one.

The following section examines the international framework and the technical solution adopted. The third section is concerned with the methodology used for this study and the related research questions. The fourth section presents the analysis and the findings of the research, followed by the conclusions.

2. Context

The Turin Polytechnic University in Tashkent (TTPU, Uzbekistan) is a private institution set up in Spring 2009 based on an agreement between the governmental entity in the automotive market, Uzavtosanoat SC, General Motors Corporation and Politecnico di Torino (PoliTo, Italy). In the past 10 Years, TTPU has been established as one of the flagship Universities in Uzbekistan, offering engineering tracks in the area of mechanical, civil and computer engineering within the framework of double degree programs with PoliTo. Both local and Italian professors jointly deliver TTPU lectures. The cooperation has been further strengthened via training and exchange periods of lecturers and researchers in Italy. To meet Uzbekistan's educational needs and characteristics, in 2018, PoliTo has organised a call for ideas "GYM: Grow Your Methodology", aimed at supporting the redefinition of teaching methodologies and course contents in bachelor programs (Ballatore et al., 2019). Implementing a remote laboratory into an Automatic Control course was one of the ideas awarded. The experimental activities on modelling and design control systems were performed in Autumn 2019 in the bachelor course at TTPU on a set of real laboratory processes available in PoliTo through a suitable remote laboratory software/hardware platform.

Based on this first positive experience, the remote automatic control lab has been furtherly extended to be also exploited in the course of Laboratory of Robust Identification and Control (LRIC), offered in Autumn 2020 to the students of the Master of Science in Mechatronic Engineering at PoliTo. In this context, the remote laboratory has played a crucial role to cope with the restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic since on-site lab activities were not allowed.

The first edition of REAL (REAL 1.0) was made by a computer located at PoliTo in Turin, connected to a set of magnetic levitation systems. The remote lab architecture consists of two parts: a client, used by the student, and a server, installed on a computer in the PoliTo lab. Each magnetic levitator available for the remote Lab is connected to a NI MyRIO board (NI, 2016), which manages the input and output signals of the system. The NI MyRIO boards, together with a webcam, are connected to a server through the USB interface. The user clients, implemented as a Simulink library block, communicate to a single NI MyRIO board through the server that acts, as a matter of fact, as a gateway system. It is essential to point out that the proposed architecture is like others that were successfully adopted in literature, including (Casini et al., 2003, Kalúz et al., 2014). The readers are referred to the references mentioned above for additional details. This contribution focuses more on the impact of the REAL in the context of lab implementation in a framework of different educational systems and involved countries.

The students can study and simulate the Matlab/Simulink environment's control problem and then move to the real plant. Through a suitable Matlab library distributed to the students, they can connect to the computer located at the PoliTo lab, program the controller with their parameters and test the system's performances. The students have direct control of the magnetic levitator, which can be switched on and off. A dedicated webcam pointed to the systems allows the student to visualise the experiment in real-time. During the investigation, the student receives accurate measurements of the interest signals that can be plotted in real-time or stored for a deferred analysis.

In the second edition (REAL 2.0), the system has been modified and extended to handle the significantly larger number of students attending the LRIC course. More precisely, a stand-alone software package based on Labview has been designed and made freely available to the students. Using such software, the students can directly and simultaneously connect to the real system to collect experimental data and/or implement their control algorithms without involving Matlab or any other proprietary software. Furthermore, the second edition of REAL also includes an online reservation system allowing the students to book the desired lab system for one or more specific time slots in the week. Figure 1 shows the REAL timeline implementation with additional information that will be commented on later.

The booking system is based on the open-source appointment scheduler “Easy!Appointments” (Tselegidis, 2018). It is implemented through a web application and hosted on a dedicated web server. Students can choose the laboratory equipment to use and a free time slot. Once the reservation is confirmed, the student receives a confirmation e-mail and a passcode. The code, which stores the encrypted information of the reservation, is used by the client application to access the reserved lab system only within the booked time slot. The booking system stores all the information in a database to let the teacher check the platform usage.

Figure 2 shows one of the experimental set-ups available in the Lab, while the user's remote interface is shown in Figure 3.

3. Methodology

The remote laboratory REAL allowed students to practice automatic control theory to a real magnetic levitation system. The lecturer first introduced the students to REAL's main functionalities in some cooperative classroom lectures. Then, they were invited to perform controller design autonomously, implementation and experimental testing through REAL, accessible also from home, twenty-four hours a day, for the entire course duration.

This prospective study was designed to investigate how different educational and social contexts can share a laboratory facility to achieve a better education quality in an Automatic Control course. As already stated in the Introduction, there are two primary aims of this study: (a) to investigate the novelty effect of a remote lab in a traditional course (Uzbekistan case study), and (b) to ascertain a shift from a physical laboratories experience to a remote one (Italian case study).

Following previous studies (Hidalgo et al., 2018), to analyse the impact of REAL on the learning methodology, quantitative data have been used, with the support of some qualitative observations.

According to the systematic review of assessment implementation on laboratory experiences (Nikolic et al., 2021), REAL is evaluated mainly by considering the students' assessments of the cognitive domain, underselling the learning being achieved, and the student survey.

3.1. Population and sample

The remote Lab's impact is analysed within two courses, one located in Uzbekistan and another in Italy. It is worth noting that the REAL remote Lab's use pursued different (although similar) objectives in the two courses.

The Automatic Control course at TTPU is offered in the second year of the Bachelor degree “Information Technologies and Programming in Industry” (ICT track, for short). This study considers the academic year 2018/2019, where the 53 enrolled students had no laboratory activities, and the academic year 2019/2020, where the 82 enrolled students had the opportunity to perform control design experimental activity for the first time. One can explain the general increase of the students enrolled in the ICT track by the growing labour market offer in this sector. All the students enrolled in the course are twenty years old, and the gender ratio in the years under study remains constant, about 90% male. Students did not know in advance that the course was revised toward more experimental learning, but the lecturer informed them during the first lesson. The ratio of the lectures taught by Italian and Uzbek lecturers remains the same. However, the remote laboratory assistance was managed entirely from Italy.

On the other hand, at PoliTo, laboratory practice has been traditionally an essential part of the LRIC course offered in the second year of the Master of Science in Mechatronic Engineering. Until the academic year 2019/2020, students attended the experimental lectures in the physical laboratory working in small groups. During 2019/2020, the master students enrolled were 80. In the academic year 2020/2021, the number of students increased to 125 due to a general growth in the population in the Master’s degree. The course involves twenty-two/twenty-four years old students with a constant gender ratio of about 85% male and 15% female. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic condition, the course was taught entirely online.

3.2. Instruments

The analysis considers such differences through the following performance indicators: