Content‐rich interactive online laboratory systems

Online learning environments are rapidly becoming viable options for offering students a bridge from theoretical concepts to practical engineering applications. They represent collections of integrated tools that provide a delivery mechanism for rich learning content, advanced assessment capabilities as well as affordable access to a wide range of educational resources. Such online learning environments have been used at Stevens Institute of Technology (SIT) for a number of years to provide undergraduate engineering students with a comprehensive laboratory experience based on content‐rich and flexible remote and virtual laboratory experiments. These Web‐based educational tools were developed using various open source programming languages and free software applications. As discussed in this article, these open source components form a powerful combination for the cost‐efficient development, implementation and sharing of Web‐based virtual experimentation systems. This article describes the delivery methods for online experiments and the corresponding software modules implemented, which were integrated into a comprehensive student laboratory experience currently being used at SIT in a sophomore‐level core undergraduate course on solid mechanics taken by all undergraduate engineering majors as well as in a junior‐level course on mechanisms and machine dynamics for mechanical engineering majors. Furthermore, some results of the learning outcomes assessment for online experiments conducted over several years at SIT are summarized.