On-line Physics Laboratory Experiments: Research Activities in the LABNET2 Project

The recent growth of interest of teachers to introduce the use of computer as educational tool encourages the development of didactic environments so that the use of computer classrooms and the resources of the web become daily tools. An aspect of distance education not currently supported by most support environments – commercial and experimental – is related to the possibility of performing laboratory exercises remotely. In the present paper, we illustrate on-going research activities and experimentations within the project LABNET2 of the Italian Interuniversity Computer Science Consortium (CINI) in the National Laboratory for Multimedia and Telematics (ITEM) in Naples. ITEM runs a set of projects, called LABNET, for the experimentation of technologies of remote access to laboratories. Such projects foresee the creation of laboratories, into which real technical-scientific equipments are remotely accessible to teachers and students. Such objective is achieved through the realization of a suitable computer and network infrastructure and the development of necessary software applications. The research activities described here are aimed at remote management of a physics laboratory. By taking advantage of telematics and multimedia technologies, some experiments available in the Physics laboratory (called LAFIDIN) of the Engineering Faculty of the Federico II University of Naples have been made controllable remotely over the Internet. The remote management allows students to perform experimentations, control equipments and visualize the results of the experiments as if these were performed locally. The access to a real laboratory, even if realized through remote control, aims at a greater didactic effectiveness when compared to conventional techniques of virtual laboratories, supported by advanced environments for distance learning. In this paper, we discuss also results of trials run in cooperation with 10 high school institutes of the district of Naples and Avellino. Students performed physics experiments on remote equipments through Internet connection from their schools. During the execution of the experiments, students had the possibility to have a complete vision of what happens in the laboratory through a remote controlled video camera. The camera helps to improve the pedagogical effectiveness of the experiments, remarking the difference with computer simulated experiments.