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Welcome to iLabs Documentation Wiki, beta!

The iLab Project is dedicated to the proposition that online laboratories - real laboratories accessed through the Internet - can enrich science and engineering education by greatly expanding the range of experiments that the students are exposed to in the course of their education.

Unlike conventional laboratories, iLabs can be shared across a university or across the world. The iLabs vision is to share lab experiments as broadly as possible within higher education and beyond. The ultimate goal of the iLabs project is to create a rich set of experiment resources that make it easier for faculty members around the world to share their labs over the Internet.

For those new to the idea of a wiki, it is a kind of website that any user can edit - right here live on the page, in real time - as well as read. It gives users the ability to add content, as on an Internet forum, and also allows that content to be edited by other users. Wikis can be very helpful in creating an internal knowledge base and assembling an online community to share information. Our hope is that this wiki will be used by all members of the iLabs community to share knowledge and learn about the existing iLabs systems. For more information about wikis, click here.

Our wiki site is currently undergoing some renovation. Please forgive its poor appearance as we try to improve on the site for your benefit.

Available iLabs

Below are the labs available under iLabs:

In addition, the following are being developed:

  • Elvis v2 - With switches (MIT, collaborating with OAU)
  • iLabs Mini (MIT, collaborating with OAU)
  • Elvis digital logic (OAU)
  • Scanning Electron Microscope (OAU)

The iLab Project and iLab Architecture

iLabs harness the Internet and enable students to use real instruments via remote online laboratories. Conducting experiments motivates students; it also causes them to learn more effectively. Experiments allow a student to compare reality with simulations, collaborate with each other, and follow their curiosity. Yet, significant expense, space and safety considerations prevent many engineering classes from including lab components. By providing online access to remote laboratories, MIT is delivering the educational benefits of hands-on experimentation both to our own students and to students anywhere, at any time.

Under the guidance of MIT professor Jesus del Alamo, iLabs is creating remote web-accessible laboratories that provide a new framework for science and engineering courses.

Three goals affected the overall design:

  • Intuitive Infrastructure: The software must make it simple and inexpensive for a lab to be internet accessible---regardless of the nature of the lab itself, the pedagogy used by the faculty, or the academic policies of the educational institution using the lab.
  • Scalable Architecture: The software and process must scale to support multiple online lab offerings for large groups of students semester after semester.
  • Cross-institution Cooperation: The system must allow schools or universities to share the cost of an expensive. It must also accommodate such government participation as limited access to national laboratories or facilities like the International Space Station.

iLabs began with the microelectronics WebLab, where students can test fragile, microelectronic devices. Now, this concept of online experimentation has extended to other disciplines, creating seven MIT online laboratories to date. These include a chemical reactor, mechanical structures, a chemical engineering heat exchanger, a civil engineering shakr table, a polymer recrystallization experiment, and a photovoltaic weather station.

Click here for information on the iLabs Architecture.

General Information about Online Laboratories

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