Beyond the classroom walls: remote labs, authentic experimentation with theory lectures

Recent calls of constructivist pedagogy emphasize the role of delivering education in more authentic and real contexts. It urges the change of the classical classroom lecture model towards more active participation of the students. Engineering is to large extent an applied science, it is very important to be taught in its genuine context rather than the current more theory oriented model. One important issue is to support the classroom theoretical lectures with real applications. Laboratories are provided essentially as core part of engineering education as a platform of showing the applicability of theory into practice, however, most labs are not portable and can not be moved into the classroom to show the links between theory and practice in real time. One solution is close the distance through remote operation of the lab rig during the lecture. This approach is also useful in enriching the number of utilized rigs through sharing among institutes. This paper reports on the approach of utilizing and sharing remote experimentation for classroom theoretical lectures. It also reports the students opinion towards the novel approach.