ProjectProject

Enriching student learning experience through international collaboration in remote laboratories

Project Information

Year Funded:
2008
Grant (ex GST):
$220,000
Project Status:
Ongoing
Program:
Competitive Grants
Project Keywords:
Communities of practice, Engineering education, Intercultural communication, International collaboration, Laboratory experiments, Remote laboratories
Project Discipline:
Engineering and Technology

Institutions

  • University of South Australia (Lead)
  • University of Technology, Sydney
  • Blekinge Institute of Technology Sweden
  • University of Porto (FEUP) Portugal

Project Leader

  1. Professor Andrew Nafalski

Project Outcome

This project will develop, implement and evaluate a framework that will enhance international and intercultural perspective of Engineering students through their collaborative work with students from other countries remotely via the internet, using remote laboratories (RLs) as a platform for this collaboration. The project will deliver a toolkit for university educators to support student collaborative activities in remote laboratories.

Project Methodology

  1. Review literature on current best practices in on-line collaborative learning, in the context of student collaborative work in an engineering laboratory. Information from this stage will guide our focal points for developing a framework for teaching students on-line collaboration skills in international environment.
  2. Investigate and recommend the most suitable communication system(s), to be used in remote laboratories including both hardware and software and taking into account issues like technical and economical diversity in various countries/regions.
  3. Examine important issues in international and intercultural communication between distant students and will produce a manual to effectively guide this communication.
  4. Implement and evaluate the framework and a toolkit for lecturers to provide effective learning environment where students will be gaining international collaborative skills while performing engineering experiments in remote laboratories. All stages will be disseminated and will seek feedback from the Reference Group and wider academic community.

The information on this project's page was correct at the time of funding. Changes may have occurred since.

The information on this project's page was updated 1 April, 2009.

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