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What is the remote lab ?

The remote lab is a numerical environment that allows you to work alone or with others on workstations at IUT Orsay (Paris-Saclay University, available 24 hours a day, and to access to a remote catalogue of lab work.

Why the remote lab

Historically, this remote lab was created during the March-June 2020 lockdown period to ensure the continuity of theoretical and practical teaching at the Physical Measurements department of the Orsay IUT. Today, as students and teachers have returned to classrooms, the remote lab is becoming a hybrid solution, complementary to traditional classroom teaching, which allows users to access, individually or in groups, their digital university environment as well as a certain number of practical works similar to those carried out in educational laboratories.

The use of the remote lab is diversified:

• Use of heavy softwares (difficult to install and maintain on individual computers)
• Carrying out experiments in support of lectures or tutorials
• Revision for lab exams
• Training of new teachers
• Continuing education
• Accessibility to practical work for students with disabilities
• Mutualisation of practical work within the framework of international collaborations
• ...

Functional organization

The remote lab is based on the joint use of a virtual classroom (via the solution BigBlueButton) allowing the virtual reconstruction of the interactions of a work group in a practical course and a remote access service to workstations (via the solution Apache Guacamole) allowing control of the material of lab works. (via the solution Apache Guacamole) of the IUT allowing the control of the material of the TP.

The access to the hardware environment of the remote lab is more specifically detailed in this physical architecture.

User feedback

We experimented this solution during the March-May 2020 lock-in period with students from the first and second year classes in the Electronics, Instrumentation Computing and Networked Measurement Systems courses. As the survey below shows, the feedback from the students is very satisfactory. Some students even consider that this solution is better than the classroom-based course! This result is due to the fact that some features of this solution do not have their equivalent in the classroom. For example, the possibility of working with students on their workstations (with their agreement) using the remote desktop sharing service; or isolating oneself for 10-15 minutes with a partner, using the private meeting rooms, to discuss the progress of the course and give personalised advice (in these privileged moments, the link with the students sometimes becomes stronger than in a classroom setting); or having feedback from all or part of the group thanks to the survey system integrated into BigBlueButton.

Collaboration and support

• This project is the result of a collaboration between the IUT of Orsay and Polytech Paris-Saclay.

• The remote lab is supported by l'Université Paris-Saclay(HyCare project) and the Polytech Network (Idefi AVOSTTI project)