Records of GOLC Meeting in Villach June 2010.

It was noted that of the three activities planned at the January 2010 GOLC meeting in Sydney we completed the Terms of Reference and placed this on the website, we made a draft of the vocabulary (also posted to the website), but made little progress on the metadata.

Consequently, the committee decided to better focus the activities for presentation at the January 2011 GLC Meeting. The committee members present were canvassed for topics which should be addressed in the near term, and then prioritised these items. The most urgent three activities are described below.

ACTIVITY 1: Promotion of Member Activities

A number of members noted that although the web site identified each of the team members of the committee, there were no details of the projects undertaken by these members. It was determined that

entries be made on the public website identifying projects in which the committee members participated; these entries to take the form of links to existing web pages where possible, or to pages within the existing site where this information would be collated.

• Deliverables: The web site pages instantiated on the current website.
• Facilitator: Kirky DeLong, Mark Schulz
• Due Date: August 13 2010 (7 weeks)

ACTIVITY 2: Derivation of Metadata

This project was broken down into three phases.

1. Derive metadata describing pedagogical attributes of the learning activities of remote laboratories.
2. Using this metadata, describe a representative sample learning activities based upon existing remote laboratories from within the GOLC community.
3. There needs to be a repository where all this information can be stored and easily accessed. It was decided by the committee members that rather than start developing a new software system we would make use of the Lab2Go system. This activity is to be reviewed at the next GOLC meeting, and a determination made as to the success or not of this decision.

Note that this repository then fulfils the role of being a searchable resource containing a list of existing experiments, learning activities, and available hardware rigs. The intention is to expand the repository to include such information as: indication of the assumed prerequisite knowledge to successfully undertake a learning activity, expected learning outcomes, indications of time requirements to undertake the learning activity, indication of the number of learning activities provided by a particular hardware rig, the number of (different) hardware rigs that support a particular learning activity, etc. This extended level of information also needs to be supported with real performance data collected from each hardware rig. Thus, it is requested that

the Technical Committee report on feasibility of provision and timeline for delivery of real-time performance data from the execution of learning activities on hardware rigs. The precise data needs to be further refined in collaboration with the Technical Committee, but a minimum starting set might cover: operational time, number of times run, time of day, location from which activity is invoked, etc. There is also a strong request for the data collected to be exportable in one or more standard formats (CSV, XML, ...). Finally, technical consideration needs to be given as to how the data is made available. Not only should there be a freely accessible database of the historical data sets, but the data should also be available in real-time, e.g., to enable adaptation of the learning activity to the progress of the user and the experiment itself, for visualisation of the progress of an activity, or for purposes not yet conceived.

• Deliverables:
  • Phase 1: A document describing the learning activity metadata (this is linked to the Technical Committee metadata document and will require coordination with the progress of that document).
  • Phase 2: A document describing the process of mapping a set of existing experiments
  • Phase 3: A demonstrable set of entries in the Lab2Go repository (coordinate this test with the Technical Committee test).
• Facilitators: Phil Long, Stephen Tuttle (with assistance from Christian Guetl for Phase 1)
• Due Dates:
  • Phase 1: August 27 2010 (9 weeks)
  • Phase 2: Oct 29 2010 (9 weeks)
  • Phase 3: December 3 2010 (5 weeks)

ACTIVITY 3: Development of Resource Kits

Committee members decided that the provision of Resource Kits would ease the transition for new adopters of remote laboratories. Development of these kits is deemed a priority activity if the wider community are to make informed decisions about whether to adopt remote labs, right through to deciding to build their own lab. These kits would guide adopters through the various stages of adoption. The materials will be developed in succession.

• Kit 1: Why adopt remote labs?
• Kit 2: How do I use a remote lab?
• Kit 3: How can I create my own learning activity?
• Kit 4a: Should I create my own experiment?
• Kit 4b: How do I construct my own experiment?

It is requested that Kit 4b be produced by the members of the Technical Committee.

• Deliverables: a kit consists of a viewable web site (which may also be provided as as printable document)
• Facilitators: Euan Lindsay, Steve Murray
• Due Dates
  • Kit 1: August 13 2010 (7 weeks)
  • Kit 2: September 24 2010 (6 weeks)
  • Kit 3: November 12 2010 (7 weeks)
  • Kit 4a: December 17 2010 (5 weeks)
  • Kit 4b: TBD

Monitoring of Progress on Activities

It is suggested that all committees meet via a Skype conference call once a month for the remainder of 2010. It is further suggested that this meeting take place on the last Friday of each month for July through November, and on the second Friday of December. Other meetings will be called when members require. It is suggested that these calls should occur at 2200 GMT (approximately 6 am Australia west coast,8 am East Coast Australia, 6 pm Boston, 12 midnight Vienna). Other times may be selected if conference calls are primarily regionally supported.

Skype conference call dates:

• July 30
• August 27
• September 26
• October 29
• November 26
• December 10

Activities for Later Consideration

The committee also discussed a further two activities, but these are deferred for deliberation and deeper discussion at a future GOLC meeting:

• Integration of learning activities into an LMS.
• Multilingual presentation of learning activities.