This was received in early 2006, following the use of Weblab during the winter.
Educator Feedback
Overall it was an excellent experience for all of us. The response from the students was extremely positive about both the projects themselves and the lab interface. Almost all of them found it easy to learn and use. They appreciated being able to gather real data so quickly, and liked comparing it to the ideal versions we studied in class. I can't think of another way we could have fit experimentation like this into a class with a tight time schedule.
The main software challenge was the incompatibility with the newer version of Java. Our computer labs had already converted to the next version of Java and the technicians were not comfortable reverting to the older version because they felt they would need to test all the other software. So we had only two computers in our labs able to run the software.
My main suggestion for future improvements on the lab itself would be to have more devices available. My students expressed interest in different types of devices. I would actually prefer more devices from the same process. For example, if we had a wide transistor and a narrow transistor of the same length from the same process (and were given drawn values) we would be able to extract many more process related parameters such as delta Le and external resistance.
A few students, mostly those who learned English as a second language, had some trouble with the interface, logging in, and figuring out how to run things.
Student Feedback – The good
"It was a nice tool to understand the characteristics of a pn junction in detail. It would not have been possible in such a short period of time to obtain so many data points if the experiment were to be conducted manually in a lab."
"Excellent project idea!!"
"The interface for collecting the data and performing the experiments performed flawlessly and was simple and intuitive. All together it was a valuable exercise."
"The experiment was useful in that it really emphasized the fact that the ideal relationship is not very useful for actual modeling of a physical device. I think that this was not apparent to me from my previous studies."
"It is very exciting to do online lab with real devices."
"..very user friendly, easy to use and very quick."
"The WebLab is awesome"
Student Feedback – Places where we need to improve
"Include some screen shots of the user interface in the WebLab 6.0 User Manual."
"Figures depicting how exactly to use the SMUs would be useful."
"I wish the requirements for Java client had been a little more clear."
"Temperature can not be changed."
"In extracting the data with the limitation of 1000 poitns it is difficult to get good datapoints in a single sweep. So decided to break the whole sweep into segments to run the measurement and download the data. But due the fact that the measurement is run off a physical device, got discontinuous values and even the device temperature was slightly offset each time."
"...more documentation of Set-up management functions in the weblab module"
"No where does it state you need to check the download button to run the lab."
"It would be interesting to see how the IV curve behaves with different factor aside from voltage, probably doping types of materials, etc."