Remote Electronics Workbench – taking the lab home

Students usually regard lab classes as the opportunity to practice learnt theory. Some would even pass more time in the lab performing new or the same experiment with slightly different parameters, if allowed to. Benefiting from the experience gained in the PEARL (Practical Experimentation by Accessible Remote Learning) project, the University of Porto has developed a Remote Electronics Workbench (REW) that allows students to carry out real experiments in electronics, from their home computer, through web-based access. The REW includes: interfaces to experimental scenarios; real video feedback from the lab environment; video-conference facilities to enable student-to- student and student-to-tutor dialogue; and registration and booking pages to new and registered users, respectively. It is also a constituting part of a proposal to create a Remote Experimentation Network covering both European and Latin-American countries, under the Alfa II programme.