Using and Evaluating Remote Labs in Transnational Online Courses for Mechanical Engineering Students

Integrating online remote laboratories is still a growing field in the area of manufacturing technology and in engineering education research. In order to improve engineering education in manufacturing technology the authors developed a complex remote laboratory that can be used in this professional context to perform several important experiments at a distance. One of these experiments is the tensile test to determine material properties. As this remote laboratory is applied to more and more educational settings a sound evaluation process comes into focus. Therefore a holistic evaluation model has been developed. This model considers the individual learner’s, the technical and the didactical perspective. It mainly uses online questionnaires and relies on self-evaluation by the students. These questionnaires were applied for the first time in context of a 4-weeks online course in summer 2015. In that year 16 Students from all over the world participated in this course online, connected via Internet. During the course they had to work together in transnational teams. Among other tasks they had to use the remote lab in order to perform several tensile tests and analyze the data. Applying the questionnaires helped to understand the students’ thoughts on the experimentation process and the remote laboratory. The evaluation results show, that the students appreciate the given opportunity to perform online experimentation and they experienced an individual competence development. The paper describes the remote laboratory, the online course, the evaluation model, and the obtained evaluation results.