Remote experiments in secondary school education

Abstract

This paper describes the current influence of the remote laboratory on practical learning aspects of secondary sector of education. The key challenges faced by the teaching of science include insufficient hands-on laboratory usage in classrooms. The main objective of the paper is to present learning approach of adaptation and usage of remote experiments of WebLab-Deusto in curriculum of secondary school. The activity was organized in collaboration with secondary school teachers of P. Andrés Urdaneta School. Educators can benefit from different teaching methods (collaborative, inquiry-, and project-based learning) integrated in WebLab-Deusto. The teaching of Ohm's Law in Physics curriculum of secondary school was one of the topics executed during this research. The remote laboratory assignment for students was developed on Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality (VISIR) Open Lab Platform. The existing remote laboratories are more or less copies of hands-on ones. VISIR is a remote laboratory created by Blekinge Institute of technology (BTH) for designing, wiring and measurement of electric circuits. This main feature of VISIR allows one building a scenario of performing basic DC and low frequency AC circuits experiments related to Ohm's and Kirchhoff's laws. Moreover, the students will become familiar with instruments, components, manuals, data sheets, circuit wiring, and other laboratory work. In the paper the main principle of VISIR will be presented; the remote experiments executed by students will be shown. Finally, the result of integrating of remote experiments for study in Urdaneta School will be discussed.