IEEE REVISTA IBEROAMERICANA DE TECNOLOGIAS DEL APRENDIZAJE, VOL. 9, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2014 23

Performing Real Experiments From a RemoteLearning Management System

Federico Lerro, Susana Marchisio, Sebastián Martini, Horacio Massacessi, Emmanuel Perretta, Andrés Gimenez,Nicolás Aimetti, and Juan Ignacio Oshiro

Abstract— This paper describes the integration of LaboratorioRemoto de Física Electrónica, fully developed at the UniversidadNacional de Rosario, with the learning management system(LMS) developed by e-ducativa. This technology is basically aself-communication protocol that allows exchanging data in astandardized way between the LMS software and the devicecontrol connected to the remote equipment. It includes theimplementation of an interface that allows the users of the LMSto have access to this remote lab and to other future similardevelopments. This integration allows the students to performexperimental practices from the distance by accessing the sameLMS they use for other educational purposes.

Index Terms— Remote laboratory, E-learning, learning tech-nologies.

I. INTRODUCTION

THE advances in knowledge, methods and techniquesassociated with the field of information and communi-

cation technologies (ICT) are allowing significant changesin the practice of education. There are several applicationswhich improve the capacity of virtual environments, guidethe students in their decisions through the implementation oftechniques of artificial intelligence, and develop efficient andreliable mechanisms of asynchronous communication amongothers [1].

In this context, the LMSs –widely spread among educationalinstitutions– are highlighted. They are allies in the develop-ment of distance education through the Internet, and help themanagement of information, the availability and distributionof multimedia didactic materials, the multidirectional commu-nication (synchronous and asynchronous) without taking intoaccount the place of residence.

However, these systems, as they are known today, becomelimited when they have to provide distance education in thefield of scientific-technologic disciplines with an experimentalbasis. It is true that through the use of the LMSs it is possibleto do certain practical activities (exercises, exams, and onlinehanding in of projects). Yet, it is also true that purely practical

Manuscript received September 6, 2013; revised December 18, 2013;accepted December 18, 2013. Date of publication January 22, 2014; dateof current version February 20, 2014.

F. Lerro, S. Marchisio, and E. Perretta are with the Facultad de CienciasExactas, Ingeniería y Agrimensura, Rosario 2000, Argentina (e-mail:flerro2@yahoo.com.ar; timbucorreo@gmail.com; emmanuel_ap85@hotmail.com).

S. Martini, H. Massacesi, A. Gimenez, N. Aimetti, and J. I. Oshiro are withe-ducativa SA, Rosario 2000, Argentina (e-mail: hmassac@e-ducativa.com).

Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are availableonline at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/RITA.2014.2302052

activities of such technical fields as Engineering do not findin LMSs an overall solution. This problem is solved byremote laboratories [2].

In the “Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Ingeniería y Agrime-nsura-Universidad Nacional de Rosario” (FCEIA-UNR) wedeveloped a Remote Laboratory of Electronic Physics [3], [4].It is possible to enter the site http://labremf4a.fceia.unr.edu.ar/with a user’s name and password. This laboratory has beenand is still used in training courses for teachers at differenteducational levels, in subjects corresponding to postgraduateand updating courses dealing with the incorporation of ICTat technological university level, and also as an extra didacticresource [5]–[7], for the teaching of the main properties of thebasic electronic devices in the subject Physics IV, ElectronicEngineering, UNR. On the other hand, independently, in thissubject we are using the e-ducativa e-learning platform.

But we understand it is highly convenient for the student tohave access and perform real experimental practices in remotelaboratories from LMS. This system is used to have accessto the learning materials, communicate among students andteachers and perform and send learning activities.

Taking all this into account, we have started a project tointegrate both systems. Such a project is being developedby the authors of this research work as a technological linkbetween the company e-ducativa and the FCEIA-UNR.

In this respect, there are relatively recent antecedents of theintegration of remote laboratories with e-learning platforms.However, they make reference to the use of the Moodle plat-form. Among such papers, we can mention the Ibero-Americanworks [2] and [8]. This differs from our case in that a privately-owned LMS, e-.ducativa, is used. This company – devotedto e-learning processes– was started in Rosario (Argentina)and it has expanded to nine other countries. In Argentina, itgives technologic support to the Virtual Campus of the TeacherTraining Institute of the National Ministry of Education,(http://campus.infd.edu.ar/aula/acceso.cgi), among others.

The company has developed products and services imple-mented as modular and additional systems to provide solutionsto the needs of each institution, trying to support the growthof e-learning projects with gradual cost rising. In this case inparticular, this development stands for e-ducativa as a recentimplementation that fits with the LMS in modules.

II. DESCRIPTION

Basically, the implementation of the remote laboratory inthe e-ducativa LMS requires three main components: a) theLMS or the system of knowledge administration; b) the remote

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24 IEEE REVISTA IBEROAMERICANA DE TECNOLOGIAS DEL APRENDIZAJE, VOL. 9, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2014

Fig. 1. New interface to access the Remote Laboratory.

laboratory, which includes both the laboratory itself and thesoftware and hardware that allow distance management; andc) an interface between the LMS and the Remote Laboratorythat had to be fully developed.

A. The Remote Laboratory: Applications and Functions

Direct access to the Remote Laboratory of ElectronicPhysics is performed without the need to install a plug-in or any additional application on the web browser. Thischaracteristic makes it powerful enough to be accessible fromany PC with few requirements. Also, from a Cyber or a mobilephone, the student can access and carry out experiments usinga user’ s name and password (Fig. 1).

The detailed description of the structure of this RemoteLaboratory has been reported in previous publications[3], [4], and [7]. At the present time, it is possible to makethe following experiments:

- P-N junction diode under forward bias.- P-N junction diode under reverse bias.- Zener diode under both forward and reverse bias in only

one step.- Germanium bipolar junction transistor in active mode and

in reverse operation mode.- Silicon bipolar junction transistor in active mode and in

reverse operation mode.- Uni-junction transistor.- Field effect transistor.- Phototransistor.- Infrared light-emitting diode.

The results of the different experiments are presented in theshape of graphs and tables. Each table can be exported as aXLS File (Excel) and each graph as a PNG image file. Thescreen of results can modify the scale of the graphs so as tobe able to see the peculiarities of the resulting curves better(Fig. 2).

The most important features of the remote laboratory are:

- Independence from the access platform (compatible withdifferent browsers such as Mozilla, Internet Explorer, orOpera).

- Simple, intuitive and easy-to-use interface.- Login as registered users.- Admission to more than one user through a buffer.

In other words, if more than one student wants to do atest through the remote lab at the same time, the system

Fig. 2. Screen of results of a test with a bipolar junction transistor.

enables only one at a time. Once that student has donethe test, the system enables the following student to haverequested it, and so on.

- Recovery of each user’s own previous tests. During theexperiment, information is kept in the database server ofthe lab so that the student can get it back and see theresults of the experiment.

- Data export to an Excel spreadsheet for its subsequentanalysis and treatment.

The syllabus units that include the students’ use of theremote laboratory are the ones related to P-N junction diodesand bipolar junction transistors. Students have to deal withthese topics before working with the remote laboratory.

The first issue is essential to understand the behavior of thedifferent semiconductor diodes, and also for an informed studyof the physical processes that explain the behavior of nearlyall the semiconductor devices. The second issue requires theunderstanding of the electronic processes that take place whenmore complex structures involving junctions in interaction, asin the bipolar transistors, appear.

The integration of the remote laboratory into the syllabuswas carried out through two different activities characterizedby being open-ended and ill-structured problems.

In this way we have tried to promote, in the student’scognitive structure, the link between the concepts of Physicswhich support the electronic behavior of the devices with thecharacteristic curves obtained through test [6].

B. The e-ducativa LMS: Characteristics and Functions

The e-ducativa LMS integrates information services, news,messaging, chat, discussion forums, software repository, wikis,surveys, videoconferences, evaluation tests, marks, studentsand teachers’ updated data, and schedule of events, amongothers. From a technical point of view, the e-ducativa LMS isdeveloped in PERL and HTML languages and uses MySQLdatabase systems.

The main characteristics are:

- Intranet/Internet Multi-platform.- Multi systems: Windows, Linux, Unix, Solaris.

LERRO et al.: PERFORMING REAL EXPERIMENTS FROM A REMOTE LMS 25

- Multi language: English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese.- Management and administration system of students,

tutors, courses and online evaluations.- SCORM compatible.As for the groups and users’ management, the e-ducativa

LMS allows the webmaster to:- set up different types of groups called “at distance”,

“course”, “postgraduate”, “working group”, “researchgroup”.

- assign profiles to different types of users: students,assistants, tutors, heads, coordinators, guests.

- request a variety of follow-up and statistics reports,including an overall control of the material read andsections visited.

- import files that contain users’ groups.- organize pedagogic resources, announcements, surveys,

messaging, discussion forums and chat, with a variety oftools to edit and manage courses as well as tests.

Regarding the management, design, treatment and didacticdevelopment of contents and learning activities, this LMSallows:

- to edit content using an intuitive and simple interface.- to develop the same content among multiple authors.- to assign material, practical work and activities to indi-

viduals and/or groups.- the students to control their own performance in a course.- to report the marks of finished assignments with private

access for the student and complete access for the teacher.Considering the communicative functions, this LMS allows:

- to carry out surveys among different groups of students.- to manage news containing images and links to external

websites.- to notify the users about new activities.- to send institutional mails to all users in a group, in

different groups or in one or more groups.- to organize the schedule of events.- to make use of personal e-mail addresses or POP3

accounts.- members / users of the virtual classroom to communicate

among themselves, to upload and visualize personal data.- to participate in discussion forums and chat rooms (pri-

vate and public).- to take part in video conferences (embedded net-meeting).

C. Characteristics of the Implementation

The way to integrate both systems is shown in the followingdiagram (Fig. 3):

To integrate the LMS with the Remote Laboratory, we didthe following activities:

- Unification of authentication: Both systems, which haveseparate authentication, were unified by letting the userswho are doing a course on LMS log in from the LMSitself.

- Implementation of a security system: The Recrypt Cypherversion 4 (RC4) encrypted method and the Message-Digest Algorithm 5 (MD5) were used to check thevalidity of data sent from and to the platform.

Fig. 3. Characteristics of the integration.

Fig. 4. Screen to manage activities in the LMS.

- Re-design of the Remote Laboratory interface: It wasmade according to the design provided by the e-ducativaLMS. CSS and HTML5 templates were used. Its correctoperation in all modern browsers available both for PCsand mobile devices was checked.

- Management of users: From the platform side, the usersare the students and teachers who use the LMS. Thelaboratory keeps a record of the ID of the LMS users anda password mutually agreed and linked to the same ID.

- Content management: The contents of the remote labora-tory are managed by the system Remote Laboratory.

III. OPERATION OF THE INTEGRATION

The resource Remote Laboratory is integrated in modulesinto the LMS as an activity. The user, who can create anactivity to use the Remote Laboratory, is the teacher, whois also responsible for managing the contents of the syllabusof the subject or course in the virtual classroom (Fig. 4). Soas to use the remote laboratory to carry out an activity, itis necessary to ask for it, ticking on the option: “Handed inthrough the remote laboratory”.

26 IEEE REVISTA IBEROAMERICANA DE TECNOLOGIAS DEL APRENDIZAJE, VOL. 9, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2014

Fig. 5. The activity with Remote Laboratory as seen by the student.

Fig. 6. Student’s view including the button “Open remote laboratory” in thediagram “Do activity”.

Fig. 7. Main laboratory page. The student may ask to do a new test or seethe results of a previous test.

For the students’ view, the created activity is checked asshown (Fig. 5).

Once the student has done the activity, the teacher sends itback. It may be approved or failed. For example, the studentmay be asked to do the experiment and the report again. In thiscase, the student will see what is shown in Fig. 6.

The student presses the button “open remote laboratory”and a new window appears corresponding to the main menuof the remote laboratory. Once into the remote laboratory, thestudents may ask to do a new test or to see the results of aprevious one (Fig. 7).

As a consequence, a Result screen will come out and itwill show data in graphs and tables (Fig. 8). So as to let thedata “travel” to the LMS, the student has to press the button“Export to the virtual classroom”, from the same screen. Then,a new window is opened (Fig. 9). In this window, the studentwrites the test report and sends it to the teacher for assessmentpressing the button “send”.

Fig. 8. Result Screen seen from LMS.

Fig. 9. Student’s writing space to report the activity.

Fig. 10. How the professor sees what the student handed in. The red flagshows what needs correction.

With the student’ s report and the results of the test, thesystem generates a report of the activity in a file format witha PDF extension. Such report will be visualized in the teacher’ssession as shown in Fig. 10.

IV. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

This integration was started on the basis of a researchproject which started a couple of years ago with the LMS ofthe National University of Distance Education (UNED), fromSpain, with Moodle implementation [8].

In that moment we just asked for the possibility of havingaccess from the LMS directly to the laboratory. The user’ sverification is internally performed in the remote laboratory,which makes it simple for the final user. Taking this ideainto account, we worked to integrate our laboratory withthe e-ducativa LMS, improving it by adding encryptions forsecurity reasons. On the other hand, we also implemented thereturn of the tests to the same LMS. This same scheme orprotocol can be implemented in the future in any other LMS(such as Moodle).

This joint venture between company and university haspromoted the individual development of each of the partsinvolved in this project and will also help other institutionsto benefit from the results of this research work. We havebeen considering the extension of its use to a larger numberof institutions based on the concept of scalability. This workis just the beginning of a series of further studies to show theneed and benefits of integrating LMS with the remote lab andother networks.

LERRO et al.: PERFORMING REAL EXPERIMENTS FROM A REMOTE LMS 27

REFERENCES

[1] O. Fernandez, P. Borges, M. Pérez-Lisboa, N. Peixoto, andF. Ramirez-Fernandez. (2002). Laboratório Virtual Aplicado à Edu-cação a Distância [Online]. Available: http://sim.lme.usp.br/~nathalia/publication/sbie00.pdf

[2] J. García-Zubia, P. Orduña, J. Irurzun, I. Angulo, and U. Hernández.(2010, Oct. 22). Integración del Laboratorio Remoto WebLab-Deusto en Moodle [Online]. Available: https://www.weblab.deusto.es/joomla/publications.html

[3] F. Lerro and M. Protano, “Web-based Remote Semiconductors DevicesTesting Laboratory,” Int. J. Online Eng., vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 35–38, 2007.

[4] F. Lerro, S. Marchisio, M. Plano, M. Protano, and O. Von Pamel,A Remote lab Like a Didactic Resource in the Teaching of the Physics ofElectronic Devices, M. Auer, Ed. Kassel, Germany: Kassel Univ. Press,2008.

[5] F. Lerro, S. Marchisio, and O. Von Pamel, “Exploring didactic possi-bilities of remote lab with students of electronic engineering,” in Proc.ICBL, Nov. 2009, pp. 1–6.

[6] F. Lerro, S. Marchisio, E. Perretta, M. Plano, and M. Protano, “Usingthe remote lab of electronics physics (‘Laboratorio Remoto de FísicaElectrónica’) to support teaching and learning,” in Using Remote Labsin Education, J. García Zubía and G. Alves, Eds. Bilbao, Spain:Universidad de Deusto, 2012, pp. 211–230.

[7] S. Marchisio, F. Lerro, and O. Von Pamel, “Empleo de un laboratorioremoto para promover aprendizajes significativos en la enseñanza delos dispositivos electrónicos,” Rev. Medios Educ., vol. 38, pp. 129–139,Jan. 2011.

[8] E. Sancristobal, S. Martín, R. Gil, C. Martínez, E. López, N. Oliva,et al., “Development and interaction between LMS services and remotelabs,” Int. J. Online Eng., vol. 4, no. 3. p. 35, 2008.

Federico Lerro received the Diploma degree inelectronic engineering from Universidad Nacionalde Rosario (UNR), Argentina. He is an AssistantProfessor of physics of semiconductor devices andTechnical Chief of the Remote Laboratory of Elec-tronic Physics, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Inge-nieria y Agrimensura, UNR. He is a member of theResearch Group ICT in Science and TechnologicalEducation at the same institution.

Susana Marchisio received the Diploma degree inelectronic engineering from Universidad Nacional deRosario (UNR) and the Ph.D. degree in industrialengineering from Universidad Nacional de Edu-cación a Distancia, España. She is a Professor ofphysics of semiconductor devices and the Directorof the Research Group ICT in Science and Tech-nological Education, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas,Ingeniería y Agrimensura (FCEIA), UNR. From1991 to 2011, she was the Head of the DistanceEducation Department of FCEIA, UNR, where she

is currently the Head of the Postgraduate School.

Sebastián Martini is an Information Systems Engi-neer and the President of the net community com-pany “e-ducativa” in Rosario, Argentina.

Horacio Massacessi is an Information SystemsEngineer and the Executive Director of the net com-munity company “e-ducativa” in Rosario, Argentina.

Emmanuel Perretta is an Electronic Engineer stu-dent with Universidad Nacional de Rosario (UNR).He is a Technical Assistant Researcher with theRemote Laboratory of Electronic Physics, Facul-tad de Ciencias Exactas, Ingeniería y Agrimensura,UNR.

Andrés Gimenez is a member of the technicalteam of the net community company “e-ducativa”in Rosario, Argentina.

Nicolás Aimetti is the Technology Director of thenet community company “e-ducativa” in Rosario,Argentina.

Juan Ignacio Oshiro is an Information SystemsEngineer and technical coordinator of projects of “e-ducativa” company.