Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) Página 585 de 957
Figure 3: AutomatLabs web page and its online resources.
Figure 3 also shows the main page of the AutomatLabs portal listing all the 3 experimental
blocks integrated into the Moodle portal. Each experimental block provides to students all
the resources they may need to perform the online experimentation by themselves and
they always follow the same structure: first link (blue line) opens the related
documentation, protocol tasks, etc.; second link (red lines) opens the corresponding Java
applet with the VL and RL (shown at the left of that same figure); third and forth links
direct towards the files repositories where the data collected during the virtual and
remote experimentation are stored, respectively; and finally, the last link from each
experimental block opens the submission application to let students send their laboratory
report to the instructors.
AutomatLabs uses a custom made booking system but there are free Moodle blocks such
as rmbs5 that can be used instead. Moodle allows interaction among students (and
between students and professors) by means of instant messages or forums (as long as the
instructors have enabled these resources). Theoretical tests can be defined to evaluate
students’ knowledge after reading the provided documentation and before allowing his
access to the experimentation resources (the EJS Java applets). Instructors can also use
Moodle to fix deadlines to perform the previous activities and these events become visible
in calendars inside the e-learning platform for all the students.
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011