iLab: Remote Online Laboratories

Dates

June 2000 — December 2005

Principal Investigators

Professor Steve Lerman (Center for Educational Initiatives)
Professor Jesús del Alamo (Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science)

Goal

Online laboratories (“iLabs”) are experimental setups that can be accessed through the Internet from a regular web browser. iLabs allow students and educators in science and engineering to carry out experiments from anywhere at any time. The iLab project at MIT is dedicated to the creation of a movement to develop and disseminate technology and pedagogy for sustainable and scalable iLabs so that they can be shared worldwide.

While the primary focus of the first two years was the development, testing and implementation of a range of Web-enabled labs at MIT, the focus turned to advancing a stable, sustainable software infrastructure that labs can share beyond MIT.

Overview

Students are more motivated and can learn more effectively if they have the opportunity to conduct experiments. Experiments allow a student to compare reality with simulations, collaborate with each other, and give them the opportunity to follow their curiosity. However, many science & engineering classes do not include a lab component because of significant expense and space considerations.

In response to this, iLab created remote Web-accessible laboratories to provide a new framework of science and engineering courses. Remote laboratories allow for much more efficient use of laboratory equipment and give students the opportunity to conduct experiments from the comfort of an Internet-accessible browser. Specifically, in 1998, iLab developed a Microelectronics Device Characterization test station where students could take measurements of the current/voltage characteristics of transistors and other microelectronic devices. This lab is now used by over 500 students at MIT every year in three different courses. In addition, over seven new iLabs were created, including:

• Dynamic Signal Analyzer
• Heat Exchanger
• Shake Table
• Polymer Crystallization

In 2005 alone, these iLabs were used by students in Sweden, UK, Greece, Italy, Egypt, Tanzania, Taiwan, China, Uganda, and Nigeria in credit-bearing assignments. To date, several thousand students around the globe have used iLabs in their studies.

To facilitate the rapid development and effective management of iLabs under Microsoft sponsorship, MIT has developed a toolkit of reusable modules and a set of standardized protocols and web services referred to as the iLab Shared Architecture. This software framework has now been used by several groups worldwide to develop new iLabs.

This effort forms the kernel of a major new programmatic and institutional initiative at MIT to promote shared access to laboratory equipment by educational institutions around the world.

Uniqueness of iLabs

iLabs effectively address many of the logistical limitations of conventional laboratories. Students can carry out their lab assignments from any location, whenever it is convenient to them. Because the lab is available 24x7, students have significantly more lab time available. iLabs greatly alleviate the economics of the educational lab. Many students can be supported on limited equipment and students need not be present in potentially unsafe experimental facilities.

The true uniqueness of iLabs is that they are meant to be shared. Unlike conventional labs which must be owned and maintained by each institution, iLabs can be shared worldwide around the clock. Under MIT’s iLab Shared Architecture, the iLab project splits the responsibility for putting up a lab online from that of managing the students using it. These two factors confer iLabs with unique scaling properties and potentially enormous economic advantages, and with revolutionary impact in science and engineering education at all levels.

"The Microelectronics iLab gave easy and quick access to data, ensured the safety of the devices (it's extremely frustrating to blow up your last transistor!), and allowed me to get hands-on experience in device performance without spending hours in a lab."—Riad Wahby, graduate student

"The classes I designed this system for are on the physics of transistors, and until the Microelectronics iLab, we simply couldn't offer our students a lab experience. I'm a hands-on type of guy and I feel strongly that you shouldn't just learn the theory, but apply it."—Jesús del Alamo

Project Output

Press

"MISTI helps bring iLabs to China", MIT News Office, June 12, 2006. View

"Mi Lab Es Su Lab", Inside Higher Ed News, 03/24/06. View

"Academia gets creative with Web services," CNET News.com, 10/27/03. View

"Heat exchange machine can be controlled from the Internet," MIT TechTalk, 5/22/02. View

Publications

Amaratunga, K. and Sudarshan, Raghunathan (2002) "A Virtual Laboratory for Real-Time Monitoring of Civil Engineering Infrastructure," International Conference on Engineering Education, Manchester, UK.

Hardison, J., "An Open-Source Export Package for the MIT Microelectronics WebLab," Advanced Undergraduate Project, MIT, June 2002.

Lin, Y., "A Collaboration System and a Graphical Interface for the MIT Microelectronics WebLab, " Masters of Engineering thesis, MIT, June 2002.

Radcliffe, T. O., "Mechanical Structures Interactive Laboratory," Masters of Science thesis, MIT, February 2002.

Nasser, P. "Remote Microscope for Polymer Crystallization Weblab," Masters of Engineering thesis, MIT, 2002.

Ragunathan, Sudarshan "A Web-Based Virtual Laboratory for Monitoring Physical Infrastructure, " Masters of Science thesis, MIT, June 2002.

Presentations

del Alamo, J. A., Bailey, P., Harward, J., Hardison, J., Lerman, S. R., Long, P. D., "The iLab Architecture: Towards a Community of Internet Accessible Laboratories", Sloan-C International Conference on Asynchronous Learning Networks, Orlando (Florida), November 2005.

Chang, V, and del Alamo, J. A., "Collaborative WebLab: Enabling Collaboration in an Online Laboratory", 2002 World Congress on Networked Learning in a Global Environment, Berlin (Germany), May 2002.

Chang, V., "Enabling Collaboration in the MIT Microelectronics WebLab: a Java Servlet Approach", MTL Annual Review, January 2002.

del Alamo, J. A., "Remote Microelectronics Laboratory in SMA", Singapore-MIT Alliance Annual Symposium, Singapore, January 14-16, 2002.

del Alamo, J. A., Brooks, L., McLean, C., Hardison, J., Mishuris, G., Chang, V., and Hui, L., "The MIT Microelectronics WebLab: a Web-Enabled Remote Laboratory for Microelectronics Device Characterization", 2002 World Congress on Networked Learning in a Global Environment, Berlin (Germany), May 2002.

Amaratunga, K. and Raghunathan S., "A Virtual Laboratory for Real-Time Monitoring of Civil Engineering Infrastructure", presented at the International Conference on Engineering Education in August 2002.

Links

Microelectronics WebLab (registration required)

Chemical Engineering iLab Heat Exchanger