Web Labs On-Line

Engineering Virtual Organization

for Undergraduate

Engineering Laboratory Education:

“EVO-ELE” – Development and Implementation

Summary

The mission of this Engineering Virtual Organization for Engineering Laboratory Education (EVO-ELE) is to provide access to engineering laboratory experimentation to colleges and universities throughout the world. The vision is that a world-wide collection of university laboratories could be accessed by any student or instructor in the world via the Web (these experiments suppliers will be called “Suppliers” and the students or instructors will be called “Customers”). EVO-ELE will be the funnel through which these services are organized and supplied. The fully developed EVO-ELE will have an enormous impact on both education and society by expanding the availability of engineering education for students throughout the world whose access to equipment may be limited or non-existent.

1. EVO-ELE structure and justification:

a. Vision and mission:

The mission of EVO-ELE is to provide access to engineering laboratory experimentation to colleges and universities throughout the world. The vision is that a world-wide collection of university laboratories could be accessed by any student or instructor in the world via the Web (these experiments suppliers will be called “Suppliers” and the students or instructors will be called “Customers”). EVO-ELE would be the funnel through which these services are organized and supplied much in the way (for example) the University of Phoenix’s internationally-dispersed faculty instructs students in many different locations. The fully developed EVO-ELE will have an enormous impact on both education and society by expanding the availability of engineering education for students throughout the world whose access to equipment may be limited or non-existent.

Schools of all sizes and rankings can participate in supplying and accessing these on-line experiments and simulations. Instructors can use the on-line experiments in classroom or office demonstrations; students can use them in laboratory situations and for homework assignments. Student teams dispersed globally can work on the same experiments.

The research components of EVO-ELE will be in two interconnected research areas: (1) how to best use the cyber-infrastructure (CI) to best provide remote operation for engineering equipment and (2) effective education. Learning how people learn, while also supporting the very best ideas in U.S. engineering are essential goals in today's changing world. EVO-ELE will use learning assessments to determine the best practices for on-line experimentation.

b. Justification:

The justification of EVO-ELE rests on two items: (1) the use of laboratories in engineering education and (2) the ability to remotely conduct engineering laboratory experiments and complex interactive simulations. The importance of laboratories is supported by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). Students in laboratory experiences learn the design of experiments, the importance of dynamic behavior, data analysis, creativity, communication, models, instrumentation, learning from failure, safety, teamwork, ethics, psychomotor skills, and sensory awareness. These can be conveyed from remote experiments and simulations as well as they can in “face-to-machine” laboratories. The no-significant-difference in learning has been shown several places.

Dynamic system behavior needs a special comment here: much of engineering education is steady-state analysis (even if steady oscillations); every actual laboratory experiment is a combination of transient and (hopefully) steady-state operation. The richness of behavior that can be observed in the transient operations is very broadening to students’ learning and, of course, the way much of life occurs (Colton, 2003). On-line laboratories can add to instructors’ menu of experiences to help students learn.

Technology is enabling development and expansion of online laboratories. At UTC, the first on-line lab for undergraduate engineering was developed in 1996. Since then, 17 laboratory stations have been made available on-line. These are all accessible through a portal at http://www.engineering-labs.net that manages users, scheduling and a data base of experiments completed. This portal has shown itself to be a stable platform and has the power to provide the gateway to laboratories at other locations. (The current “local” experiments are in contact with the portal server by TCP/IP through Ethernet. “Other locations” would appear no different to the portal server: they would be connected by TCP/IP on the Internet.) The UTC on-line lab portal is currently serving about 10,000 experiments per year to UTC and other students and instructors. The portal hardware and software is tremendously underutilized; it could handle a 100-fold increase in usage with no expansion.

In EVO-ELE, we will extend development of on-line laboratories, further the sharing of human and engineering resources, and encourage interactivity, cooperation and collaboration in distance-learning contexts. The development will be primarily in expanding the Supplier base.

A recent European PROLEARN report stated that “integration of on-line experiments in education is recognized by the research community as a very challenging development and deployment framework for advances in learning technologies and methodologies. As such, it is a key platform for driving and validating core research in Real-time Internet Communication, Interactive and Distributed Systems, Interoperability or Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning. The availability of online experiments is also recognized as a key factor for really enabling the future dissemination of technology-enhanced learning) in applied sciences, technology and engineering-oriented professional and academic domains.

“The educational stakeholders in those demanding domains are aware of the promises and the challenges related to online experiments and are trying, often starting from scratch and alone, to handle them. Online experiments are at an early stage of adoption as learning resources."

EVO-ELE personnel have personal interest in helping benefit engineering education in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe as well as other places. As hypothetical examples, students and instructors at the University of Buea (Cameroon) or Abdou Moumouni University (Niger) could benefit from laboratory experiments being operated remotely in the US, Canada or Germany. Likewise, students there could participate in learning teams with students in the US, Canada or Germany.

The equipment and simulations that are available now for on-line use are valued at multiple hundreds of thousand dollars. The installation, maintenance and operation are an expense also. Expenses and technical expertise to provide and maintain equipment of this sort is beyond the budgets of schools in many developing areas. This is true within the US, Canada and Germany as well. A chemical engineering professor in Florida will introduce to EVO-ELE several complex, interactive simulations of chemical engineering systems. Chemical engineering equipment laboratories are some of the most complex and expensive to buy, build, operate and maintain; remote operation of equipment and dynamic process simulations in this field will be most advantageous.

Globalization of the usage of existing laboratory facilities will maximize the value of equipment investments in place now. The variety and value of the educational opportunities will provide rich learning opportunities to students at universities and colleges with limited equipment.

c. Organizing and governing structure:

EVO-ELE will be organized around three focused primary areas: Area 1 will focus on the CI implementation at the “Supplier” institutions, the experiment-server development. Area 2 will focus on the Customer base and user interface. Area 3 will focus on learning assessment.

For Area 1, A principal with the support of 3 others will direct the specific development of interfaces for implementing experiment and simulation servers at the various “Supplier” sites. One principal and his staff will work on continuing the expansion and maintenance of the portal server for on-line experiments.

For Area 2, Another principal, with the support of 3 others, will direct the refining of the user interfaces for on-line experiments and the enrolling of additional Customers. A principal will focus on the US users, a principal on Latin America, a principal on Africa and a principal on Europe.

For Area 3, Another principal with the support of the whole team will direct the assessment process. This will involve web-based assessments for all aspects of the on-line experimentation process. Three principals will arrange for and assist in the translation of the assessment resources.

d. Members and recruitment:

There will be two kinds of members of EVO-ELE: “Suppliers” and “Customers.” Initially, EVO-ELE has Suppliers in 5 different areas at UTC: engineering controls, electrical, chemical, mechanical and environmental engineering and there will soon be at least 4 additional ones at UFla in chemical engineering, 4 additional ones at FH-Wiesbaden and others. In EVO-ELE we will recruit two other types of Suppliers to join EVO-ELE. There are two types of new suppliers to this VO: (1) Existing remote lab providers who buy into our mission, and (2), new remote lab providers to whom we offer support and technology in exchange for adding their laboratory equipment and simulation to Web access. The existing providers include a faculty member at MIT, a faculty member in Switzerland. In the area of new providers, there is enormous potential; we envision that during this two-year seed implementation that as many as 100 of these could be added. Eventually, as many as 1000 or more Suppliers might be a part of this virtual organization (VO).

The other kind of member is a Customer. We have a data base of users of UTC’s on-line experiments that documents over 100,000 usages in the past 10 years. Though many of these are multiple uses by the same students, the data indicate easily 1000 or more high-interest customers. With this much usage, it is clear that other institutions and students can benefit from similar set-ups; therefore, EVO-ELE will offer seminars and workshops at national and international engineering education meetings to aid in recruiting a wide range of institutions dispersed around the world.

We will actively recruit members whose first language is other than English to help make our offerings accessible to as many nationalities as possible. The proposers of EVO-ELE include French, Spanish, Portuguese and German speakers; we are going to place high priority on recruiting members who can provide assistance with other languages, including Arabic.

e. International Collaboration:

One-third of the initial collaborators in EVO-ELE are foreign contributors. All are engineering professors and will aid in recruiting Suppliers as well as Customers in their own countries. In addition, a principal has close ties with Francophone countries in Africa and another principal has close ties with Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking countries in Latin America. Still another principal has connections with others in Europe. These professors can recruit Customers, primarily, as well as Suppliers in those areas.

A principal is now at Téluq, which, since 1970, is the remote education branch of the University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada. ( http://www.teluq.uquebec.ca/ ) Téluq is the first university specialized in remote education in Quebec. Téluq has a role in university education and research. It is characterized by its mode of flexible teaching. It accommodates annually more than 16.000 students. TÉLUQ and UQAM now form the largest bimodal university for francophones, combining on campus and remote students.

This principal has been active in remote education for engineers for a number of years. He is an active associate member of the European network PROLEARN. His expertise in planning and implementing remote experimentation will support the developments on EVO-ELE in areas different from what UTC has developed. He is also quite interested in providing translation assistance for remote experimentation into French.

One principal is at the University of Applied Sciences at Wiesbaden, Germany (http://fh-web1.informatik.fh-wiesbaden.de/go.cfm/fb/0/sprachid/2/lpid/0/sid/0.html ). He is in the Department of Environmental Engineering and Service. He will provide experiments in mechatronics, specifically automatic warehousing, a filling station, a sorting plant and a filter process system. Also, he can provide assistance for translation into German for materials supporting remote experimentation.

f. End users, stakeholders, and shared community resources:

There will be two “end users” for EVO-ELE: The Suppliers and the Customers. The Suppliers will have the experimental facilities installed in their engineering laboratories. UTC provides a good example of a laboratory where the on-line equipment ranges from (the simple) a motor-generator set to (the complicated) a 12-stage distillation column. These systems serve a dual role in EVO-ELE: (1) they are usable by distant students and instructors on a 24/7 basis (2) they serve as a paradigm for the development of additional equipment added to the on-line repertoire at new Suppliers.

The (intermediate) end users (Customers) will be students and instructors in engineering schools world-wide. These Customers will share laboratory equipment at a distance through the use of the internet. Teams of students and instructors from schools from countries throughout the world will be able to work together in learning, analyzing, reporting and designing experiments to support engineering education.

The stakeholders or ultimate end users will include those of us interested in investing in the moral and social value of offering life-changing training to students who are unable to get it elsewhere. Such opportunities could be a thread in the tapestry of fighting poverty, disease and injustice. The stakeholders include educators, students and the engineering-technical community.

The shared community resources will be the dispersed laboratory equipment and local web-servers as well as CI that handles the large scale system monitoring and users. The infrastructure now in place at UTC can handle the EVO-ELE for the seed implementation. A few years down the line, a larger portal/server system will likely be required. If and when that occurs, we would look for partner who could provide that service.

The laboratory equipment and simulations that will be shared include:

UTC: 18 experimental stations for chemical, electrical and mechanical engineering

Florida: 2 advanced interactive simulations and 1 experimental station in chemical engineering

FH-Wiesbaden: 4 experimental stations for industrial and mechanical engineering

TeluQ: 2 experimental stations and several interactive simulations

g.     Justification:

In addition to Section 1.b, above, there are three aspects that come together in this program. EVO-ELE will

1.      Empower the creation of a global, web-enabled playing field that allows multiple forms of collaboration among Suppliers and Customers, the sharing of equipment, knowledge and work, without regard to distance or geography, and soon even language;

2.      Allow these global laboratories to leave behind walls, floors and buildings. Students and faculty now have a vast, global pool of instructors and technicians, assembled according to needs;

3.      Create new opportunities for individuals to cooperate with anyone, anywhere in the world using the new, "world is flat" rules (from Pinto, 2007).

In terms of preparing students for professional employment, we have this anecdotal item from a new graduate from Washington State University: This is a student who performed remote experiments in a course with one of our principals using the facility at UTC. He went to work in a big oil refinery at Cherry Point, Washington. He came back to visit the professor and described the refinery control room as “Just like we did with the on-line labs.”

2. Plan for obtaining and documenting user requirements for EVO-ELE:

a. Seeking stakeholder input:

We will seek stakeholder input from contacts that we have developed over the years from the data base of UTC users and similar data bases from schools such as Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, with which we have worked or with whom we have been in contact, over the past 5 to 10 years. As mentioned in 1.c, above, we will also conduct workshops and seminars worldwide, soliciting feedback from each one; we will also imbed an invitation for input from stakeholders in all the Web pages that we develop.

UTC has a fully accredited undergraduate engineering program. http://www.utc.edu/EngineeringAndComputerScience/ . UTC also has engineering masters and doctorate programs; there will be some interaction between EVO-ELE and the graduate programs at UTC.. There are about 350 engineering undergraduate students in six different fields. UTC has well equipped laboratories in chemical, civil, electrical, environmental, industrial and mechanical engineering and engineering control systems. The areas of control systems, chemical, environmental and mechanical are the places where the most remotely accessed equipment is housed.

b. Integration of research and education:

EVO-ELE will employ research to (1) Address the central question of how to design and deliver multi consumer scenarios via advanced networks as well as possibly grouping together Customers conducting experiments using common or equivalent Suppliers. These groups could be peer groups who promote learning and produce documents such as analyses, presentations or reports. It will also (2) focus on the aggregation and control of distributed dynamic on-line laboratories, including virtual laboratories and distributed interactive simulations. These components are important in supporting the goal of engineering learning activities. Another goal of EVO-ELE (3) will be to develop and provide different forms of adaptive assistance to the Customers and knowledge management environments using advanced multimedia and control objects on advanced networks.

EVO-ELE aims to expand research results and components from projects that are now in progress. These include the UTC-based remote labs and their users in the US and in Germany. Three of the principals have had student groups work remotely with the equipment and team members at UTC for as long as five years. Their work on EVO-ELE will be directed to item (1), just above. We will work with surveys and assessments that have been conducted (and reported) to build better learning-assessment tools and to provide feedback to improve the remote lab web tools.

Research item (2), above, will be the focus of 2 of the principals. The portal/server developed thus far at UTC will provide the base for this research. We can monitor usage and responses and co-develop improved Web service of remote experimentation.

EVO-ELE will also exploit the technical infrastructures and the knowledge developed in previous projects to which team members have participated in both the US and foreign. Most notably is the work at Téluq by one of the principals which is strong in the integration of education research. He is also well versed on a variety of modes of serving remote experiments to distant users mentioned in item (3) just above.

The integration of education and learning research in EVO-ELE will be guided by Kolb’s learning cycle (theory, plan, action, reflection) and its successors. We will focus on what skills and concepts that your graduates need to have mastered and whether EVO-ELE resources are effective in conveying these.

One principal will be mainly facilitating the assessment portion of the EVO-ELE. This will involve both quantitative and qualitative assessment of student learning with and without remote lab experience.

Quantitative Measures: Students’ scores for lab reports will be compared between semesters where students use and do not use remote access labs. The professor for the course will determine which assessment tools (reports, exams, homework, etc.) will be used for comparison semester-to-semester. Data will be tabulated and evaluated to determine differences between the quality of the students’ deliverables.

Qualitative Measures: Students will be web-surveyed on two main elements:

Element 1: The overall quality of the experience/suggestions for better ease of use.

These questions would focus the Customers on the Suppliers of the remote lab experience and help make the process more user-friendly and efficient. These questions would include elements such as:

· Accessibility: Accommodating different time zones and numerous users. (Were you able to use the experiment at the time you expected? Were you able to access the online site?)

· Reliability: Assessing consistency of connection to experiment and communication with Supplier support. (Were you able to stay connected with your experiment and continuously collect data?)

· Troubleshooting: Identifying any physical problems with equipment. (Did you encounter any problems with the physical equipment which inhibited your ability to collect data?)

Element 2: Self-evaluation of enhancement of learning of technical and non technical skills

Students will evaluate themselves on a variety of ABET (a) – (k) criteria including:

(b) – Design, analysis and interpretation of data

(d) – Functioning on multidisciplinary teams

(g) – Effective communication

(h) - Have broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, and environmental societal context

(k) - Using techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools (such as computers and web interfaces) necessary for engineering practice.

A typical question from this portion of the survey would be:

How would you rate your ability to use techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools (such as computers and web interfaces) necessary for engineering practice?

(a) – Substantial new learning or experience gained

(b) – Some new learning or experience gained

And any instructor-written specific assessment questions, such as:

In writing your report, how helpful was the lab access experiment in helping you confirm product concentration versus reboiler power/reflux ratio trends?

(a) – Extremely helpful

(b) – Very Helpful

(d) - Unhelpful

Open ended-questions such as:

List the three most important things (from highest to lowest) you have learned as a result of your remote lab experience.

Between these main sets of assessment data (quantitative and qualitative), we can determine the degree of enhancement of student learning and methods for developing a better program based on constructive feedback.

One principal will provide new Web-enabled advanced, dynamic interactive simulations of a binary feed distillation column, a multiple effect evaporator system. He will also install a Web-enabled experiment in integrated thermal processing. This experimental unit, in Florida, will focus on heat-transfer phenomena in an integrated thermal processing system. The system is a highly versatile experimental set-up that emulates a high-temperature/short-time pasteurization process, and is hence is well suited to the needs of EVO-ELE. A key component is a three-stage heat exchanger that is used for heating, cooling, and for thermally conditioning recycled streams, hence allowing for a wide range of fundamental unit-operation studies concerning heat transfer (i.e., calculation of heat-transfer coefficients, effective heat transfer areas, etc.), as well as accommodating the execution of integrated heat-transfer optimization exercises where the students will seek the best flow rate and temperature conditions to optimize the operation of the entire plant.

One principal will provide 4 new Wed-enabled experiment stations. They are in mechatronics, specifically automatic warehousing, a filling station, a sorting plant and a filter process system.

c. User requirements and potential challenges:

Supplier requirements include installation of data acquisition and control facilities that can interface with Web services. Several of us on EVO-ELE have experience and expertise in this area and part of our function is to support these installations. Suppliers that are recruited to join EVO-ELE will participate in the preparation of documentation that informs the Customers of the proper use and operation of the experiments.

Development of the Customer base will be through the Dissemination items described below in section 5.

Management and operations at the Supplier sites must be funded for the long-term. In many instances, the cost of operations will be very little more that currently experienced by the Suppliers. For a prospective Supplier who already has laboratory equipment with computerized data acquisition and equipment control, it may be anywhere from a 1-hour job to a 1-day job to get it web enabled. The cost of this in terms of hardware and software may be zero. The cost in terms of labor would be a day or so by a staff member at the Supplier institution and similarly for one of three of the principals. This implementation at new Supplier sites will be supported by the activities of EVO-ELE.

Evaluation and assessment are addressed in the previous section.

The infrastructures and the data of the Suppliers hosting the laboratories as well as sites of the Customers are potentially vulnerable to attack; on-line experiments and simulations must therefore be safeguarded from malicious Web attacks. The tools for software and hardware protection must be implemented to reduce the vulnerability of on-line laboratories. We in EVO-ELE will be using the work of specialists in Web security. That is not our area of expertise to develop. We will be users of other people’s security developments.

Long-term sustainability scenarios will be developed in line with methods used in other EVO projects. Eventually, the Customer must be a significant component of this sustainability. This means that there must be some economic support for the Suppliers. During EVO-ELE we will examine the economic plans of Web-based services and evaluate their applicability to EVO-ELE. The range of these plans could include advertising (probably not viable) or a cost-per-use to the Customers. (99 cents per experiment is just one possibility that comes to mind.)

3. Project management plan for implementation of EVO-ELE:

a. EVO-ELE team:

The project team consists of seven principals

· One principal has pioneered the use of remotely operated laboratory experiments for engineering education. Since 1995, he and his UTC colleagues have developed the cyber-infrastructure which enables users to remotely operate engineering laboratory equipment, visually observe and listen to the action and results and collect data. He, along with the other participants in EVO-ELE, have been involved in a de-facto VO for varying times up to 10 years

· Research Engineer, UTC. This person’s expertise is’ be in software and hardware system development, database development and computer interfaces for equipment control and data acquisition. This person has expertise in Web 2.0 service development, .NET framework and LabVIEW.

· One principal has taught engineering with Web-based experiments and team members for 5 years. His contributions will focus on, but not be limited to the development of the best user interface and tools for student teams to work together in a VO.

· One principal has experience in teaching engineering with Web-based experiments and team members for 3 years. Her contributions will focus on, but not be limited to the learning assessment system to be an integrated part of this VO. She will be providing the web-based survey portion of the assessment. Students will login to a UIUC-based site which has the appropriate survey for their experiment. Students will be given a due date for completion of the survey. After the due date, the survey results will be directly translated to an Excel spreadsheet where data can be plotted, compared, and evaluated by instructors from different schools. UTC and other participating schools will have access to the data and will evaluate the results to close the loop on the assessment process and improve the remote lab experience. The quantitative portion of the survey will be compiled by individual instructors or TA graders based on report, homework, and/or exam scores.

· One principal is an internationally recognized leader for, among other things, the macro and micro aggregations of software components for on-line laboratories and active learning design for on-line real-time applications. He is active in the PROLEARN (European on-line education network) which is also a de-facto VO.

· One principal has taught with on-line controls laboratories served from UTC. He has worked with UTC from Köln, Germany, for about 2 years in a de-facto VO.

· One principal has developed remotely operated equipment and simulations for education over the past 8 years. His expertise is primarily in chemical engineering. He will contribute 4 simulation modules to EVO-ELE; these will include web-operable dynamic simulations of a binary distillation column and a multiple-effect evaporator. (Chemical engineering equipment laboratories are some of the most complex and expensive to buy, build, operate and maintain; remote operation of equipment and dynamic process simulations in this field will be most advantageous.)

b. Organizational chart:

Organization Chart

c. EVO-ELE schedule:

The schedule for the 2-year term of this work is shown here.

Activity	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4	Q5	Q6	Q7	Q8
Planning Meeting		- - -	- - -	- - -	- - -	- - -	- - -	- - -
Prototype Specs.	- - -		- - -	- - -	- - -	- - -	- - -	- - -
Portal qualified	- - -		- - -	- - -	- - -	- - -	- - -	- - -
UI standardization	- - -	- - -		- - -	- - -	- - -	- - -	- - -
Prototype deployment	- - -	- - -	- - -		- - -	- - -	- - -	- - -
Seminars, Workshops	- - -	- - -	- - -					- - -
Assessments	- - -	- - -	- - -
Reports, presentations	- - -	- - -	- - -		- - -	- - -	- - -
Journal articles submitted	- - -	- - -	- - -	- - -	- - -	- - -	- - -

4. Conceptual design for a Future full-scale implementation:

a. CI research and development needed for software tools and components:

EVO-ELE aims to expand research results and components from projects that are currently active and are being completed by the researchers of our team. These projects include the management of advanced multimedia and real-time objects. One principal is currently working in these areas with support from Canadian and European organizations. EVO-ELE will also exploit the technical infrastructures and the knowledge developed in other projects in which team members have participated.

EVO-ELE will further the previous work by

*        addressing the central question of how to design and deliver on advanced networks multi-actor scenarios that group together actors performing operations in which they use or produce resources such as documents, tools, other operations or resource persons.

*        focusing on the aggregation and control of distributed dynamic learning objects, such as the ones used in online laboratories including virtual laboratories and distributed interactive simulations. These are an important components to support the goal of emergent, dynamically controlled, learning activities.

*        studying the aggregation of resources represented by metadata references. These references enable actor modeling, as well as learning-object and resource modeling, to support a better matching of the resources and the actors in learning environments.

*        providing different forms of adaptive assistance to the Suppliers and Customers and adaptation of the learning and knowledge management environments using advanced multimedia and control object on advanced networks.

Emphasis will be on aggregations of software components for on-line laboratories in order to enable their integration with other components. We will develop a series of Web and Grid service software component designs. EVO-ELE work will focus on the ways of automating a lab environment design on the fly given that the following information and tools are provided and made available based on: 1) a pedagogical model including the content, the learning strategy, the media, and the delivery models; 2) some distributed user interfaces (including augmented and virtual reality elements) designed to be easily aggregated after retrieval from learning object repositories and hosted within the adequate local and remote web service reference frameworks.

Our previous investigations on the topic lead us to confirm that a peer-to-peer Web service architecture (including real-time control services) should be well defined to ensure the most important operations get the required attention within the service. A number of considerations should be taken into account to achieve a composition of services related to a given scenario for a synchronous and collaborative learning environment.

As an example, this principal developed a prototype of a remote, multi-Customer interface for a spectrum analyzer allowing collaborative work and managed accesses to the real device (presented at a conference in 2006). The design of this prototype takes into account the implementation of the following components: a) laboratory actor manager Web service component; b) laboratory Web session notification component; c) data base component interacting with the other two components.

5. Dissemination of EVO-ELE:

Dissemination of the EVO-ELE design will be by Web, e-mail, contacts of the principals and workshops, seminars, articles in international engineering journals and presentations at international engineering meetings. These meetings will include American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) and American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), both of which hold annual international meetings, and PROLEARN, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and International Network for Engineering Education & Research (iNEER).

Dissemination has actually already begun. At the Annual ASEE meeting last month, three of the principals made presentations and talked with other attendees about EVO-ELE. Faculty from Tennessee, New York, Singapore and Perth (Australia) and others were interested in participating in the expansion of Web-connected experimentation.

6. Intellectual Merit & Broader Impacts:

The intellectual merit builds on the previous experience of the team and through the effective use of technology; the EVO-ELE makes readily available to faculty and undergraduate engineering students a modern set of laboratory tools that hold potential for improving the learning of important concepts illustrated via experimentation on a real system or a complex, interactive simulation. The developments will be documented so that they can be replicated and expanded at other institutions. The team is composed of well qualified members; people who have multiple years of teaching and research experience particularly in the area of providing and conducting remote experimentation via the Web.

While promoting teaching and learning of engineering, EVO-ELE will advance the understanding of best methods of laboratory learning in engineering and technology. The EVO-ELE team includes one woman, one Latino and two foreign nationals. The EVO-ELE team fully supports the broadened participation of diversity world-wide. EVO-ELE will enhance the networking and partnerships in education world-wide. The results will be disseminated widely to enhance educational opportunities. The benefits will be improved laboratory education in engineering and technical colleges and universities world-wide.

EVO-ELE will integrate research on education teaching and learning and the delivery of education.