Addressing technical and organizational pitfalls of using remote laboratories in a commercial environment

Abstract

A remote laboratory is a hardware and software solution that enables students to interact with real equipment located somewhere else on the internet. This way, students interact with a real laboratory as if they were on a hands-on- lab session. Once the equipment is remote, it is also possible to share it among institutions, so students from one school or university can access a lab in another university. While there is an interest by many universities of sharing their laboratories, and there are several experiences doing so, the impact has been typically limited. One of the reasons for the limited impact is the lack of robustness in most solutions due to technical issues, which leads to a lack of trust and interest by the potential consumers. LabsLand is a spin-off of the WebLab-Deusto research group which sells access to laboratories of universities to other schools and universities. This contribution analyzes through use cases what are the technical and organizational pitfalls that were found in the process of taking real laboratories and making them available commercially and what are the solutions used to tackle the issues arisen.