EU HEIs have to cope with the Digital transformation and the challenges created by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Many universities have suddenly moved their lessons online leaving aside other activities usually performed in presence, such as laboratories. Practical experiences are crucial for STEM and engineering subjects for the students further employability and to acquire pivotal technical and social skills, and experimental skills (set up an experiment, use real equipment, elaborate acquired data). Virtual labs and simulations allow to mimic the lab setting but, for how realistic they are, they cannot include every real situation. Remote labs could be a solution allowing students to access remotely to the physical labs to perform practical experiences. Several EU universities have already developed their own remote labs, but by developing its own solution, so it is very difficult to reuse programming code and share the experiment results. The project objective is to design, test and validate an innovative standard educational model and ICT solution for the Augmented Reality-AR remote labs setting up on renewable energies topics in EU universities. Project target groups and participants are university professors, technical staff and students of STEM and engineering subjects, actors of the renewable energy sector. Especially, during the project at least 15 professors, 25 students, 5 technical staff for each partner university will be interviewed for the mapping phase and 10 students each partner university for the testing and validation phase. The main project activities are: mapping of the hands-on/remote labs in EU universities, designing of the standard ICT-based learning solution and pedagogical model of AR remote laboratories, remote lab ICT system and learning management system (LMS) setting up, developing of experimental modules/projects on renewable energy, testing and validation in each partner university. In order to map the currents labs at EU university a bottom up approach will be applied integrating a literature review with a field work research. The AR remote lab model developing and testing follows the Project Based Learning-PBL method based on the constructivism approach. It engages students in complex tasks by developing the ability to use facts (knowledge) to solve problems. This is particularly important for practical learning contents where the theoretical knowledge is based on the practical experience. The Virtual PBL allows to promote the students practical/active learning into an online environment in which students can learn by doing, receive feedback and continually refine their knowledge. The project main results to be achieved will impact on target groups as follow: - empowerment of universities capacities to develop innovative educational learning paths with the support of ICT-based and automatic control systems to allow students a flexible access to integrated theoretical and practical learning contents. - enrichment of the university staff and professors opportunity of learning and teaching with creative and more innovative training methods based on ICT solutions; - improvement of students experimental skills, working groups and critical-thinking, ICT skills in using remote control and IT tools; - promotion of the access to practical activities to the students with disabilities. The project main tangible results are: 1.Report on best practices and standard model for remote labs setting up in EU universities (IO1) designed based on the mapping of both remote and physical labs on renewable energy at EU partners universities; 2.ICT system for the connection at distance of the physical laboratories (IO2) with the support of the Augmented Reality (AR) technique. The system includes a LMS platform (SCORM) (IO4) as users interface to host the experimentation projects, collect and analyse the experiment data and students’ reporting/self-assessment results; 3.remote experimentation modules/projects on renewable energy topic for the performing of remote practical activities (IO3); 4.testing and validation report on remote Laboratories setting up in EU partners universities (IO5). Potential longer term benefits of the project will be the adoption by the universities of the ICT-based solution for AR remote labs setting up to be applied/transferred to other preexisting laboratories and subjects of study. Universities and students can benefit for an easy and creative distance access to the learning contents both theoretical and practical. Besides, the solution will be designed for the developing of complex experiments applicable to research activities creating synergies between learning and research, thus promoting access to scientific research. The experimental modules could be further adapted to overcome obstacles of making hands-on laboratories usable for learning disabled students, who experience difficulties in following the instructions to perform remote experiments
Hence, the project goal is to promote the digital transformation of HE to cope with the needs and challenges created by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in EU by allowing an easy access to the laboratories to practice experiments/practical activities on renewable energies topics at EU universities. The topic is particularly relevant in this crisis. Renewable energy solutions provide clean, reliable, easy to mobilise and cost-effective energy for essential services, including healthcare, water and food supply. This makes them crucial in the fast response to COVID-19. Besides, renewable energy must play a key role in economic recovery, ensuring sustainability and energy security, creating jobs and supporting resilience to protect people’s health and welfare.
With the COVID-19 pandemic the educational systems came to a sudden stop. Over 220 million post-secondary students have had their studies ended or seriously disrupted (“The COVID-19 Crisis Response: supporting tertiary education for continuity, adaptation & innovation. World Back Ed. 2020”). Thus, universities have suddenly moved their lessons online leaving aside complementary activities usually performed in presence, like e.g. laboratories. (The impact of covid-19 on HE around the world. IAU Global Global Survey Report, G.Marinoni, H.van’t Land, T.Jensen, Int. Ass. of Universities, May 2020). Practical experiments are crucial for STEM subjects because they allow students to acquire pivotal skills, set up an experiment, use real equipment, elaborate acquired data, etc. These activities can be reproduced online using virtual labs and simulations able to mimic the lab setting but, for how realistic they are, they cannot include every real situation. The solution could be to combine the advantages of online systems with real labs giving to students the chance to carry out real experiments by accessing remotely the lab, performing the practical experience receiving feedback by the remote infrastructure.