Web 2 . 0 Open Remote and Virtual Laboratories in Engineering Education

This chapter presents challenges in deploying remote and virtual laboratories as open educational resources with application to engineering education, as well as current trends in using Web 2.0 technologies to enable broader adoption and ease of development. The Spanish initiative to establish a common remote and virtual experimentation infrastructure between various universities is presented as an example of an open laboratory network. This example shows the benefit of sharing complex educational resources. The difficulties that impair the adoption and dissemination of current remote experimentation environments are then analyzed. Smart devices and widgets paradigms are proposed to transform current remote laboratories into new user manageable social entities. The Internet of Things and the Web of People concepts are introduced as a framework for further investigating collaborative, active, and social learning environments. This framework is illustrated in the context of a control course in which smart devices are interfaced through widgets integrated into personal learning environments and shared in a flexible and agile way by the learners. Christophe Salzmann École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland Denis Gillet École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland Francisco Esquembre Universidad de Murcia, Spain Héctor Vargas Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile José Sánchez Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain Sebastián Dormido Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain