The introduction of new virtual platforms with innovative teaching resources into the teaching of experimental sciences is one of the most interesting approaches to teaching today. There are already a great many resources in the fields of engineering education which are related to virtual or remote laboratories (Aktan et al., 1996; Calvo et al., 2009; Candelas et al., 2004; Domínguez et al., 2005; Dormido, 2004; Guzmán et al., 2005; Laschi & Riccioni, 2008; Riccioni 2010; Salzmann et al., 2000; Yanitelli, 2011).
One concern among teachers of all educational levels, including the university level, is to improve education from both a conceptual and a practical point of view. In this line, one of the objectives of the present work has been to organize and elaborate teaching materials designed for both theoretical classes and laboratory practicals, which will motivate the students and promote meaningful learning.
Today, there is increased use of ICTs in teaching scientific and technical subjects, due to the large amount of educational resources that can be elaborated from them. Among these teaching resources, we have noted above the great interest in the use of virtual laboratories, especially in scientific fields such as engineering. Laboratory practicals are a vital educational resource in teaching experimental and technical disciplines, allowing the student to check the degree of assimilation of the theoretical content. However, practical classes sometimes involve a degree of difficulty for students in terms of understanding the experiment. These difficulties may refer either to the physical foundations of the specific laboratory practical involved, or to the functioning of the instruments used.
This work proposed the introduction of ICTs to improve not only the theoretical classes with concept maps or computer simulations, but also laboratory practicals through the design of audiovisual teaching materials dealing with the physical fundamentals and the development of the experiments. Particularly worthy of note among the various means of supporting practical teaching in the laboratory is the use of instructional videos. One can present in them the most interesting and significant aspects of the laboratory practice, adding animations and a multitude of multimedia resources to them to facilitate the teacher's work.
Specifically, we have developed audiovisual materials to support practical work on the subject of Optoelectronics. The virtual laboratories created from the incorporation of these instructional videos have provided a tool that fosters constructivist learning, and hence encourages conceptual change, by means of an organized sequence of proposals for the students to do. These activities stimulate the students to reflect on the information and content they receive.
We believe that the introduction in various formats of audiovisual materials to complement the course's traditional laboratory script can help the student get more out of the laboratory classes, since these materials can provide both theoretical and practical details of the experiments. They can also be a complement to simulation software, as with them the student can see the experimental techniques that are used to study the simulated phenomenon.
Moreover, instructional videos constitute a virtual guide to the experiments that the student will carry out. This is an advantage when there is little laboratory equipment available but various students have to work simultaneously in the laboratory, or when the student is working non-presentially.
Therefore, approaching laboratory practicals sequentially in an instructional video can optimize both the available material resources since not all the groups of students have to use the same material simultaneously, and the available time since it allows the student to carry out more complex experiments or a greater number of them.
In our research, we designed and implemented a teaching innovation project whose aim was either to facilitate the students' preparation prior to their actually doing the laboratory practicals, or for them to carry out those practicals on virtual e-learning and b-learning platforms using the facilities provided by ICTs. In particular, audiovisual material was developed in several formats, and implemented on a Website, covering the content necessary for the study and practical preparation of the subject of Optoelectronics, a subject that we teach in the second cycle of the degree in Electronic Engineering at the School of Industrial Engineering of our University. All of the instructional videos produced have a common structure. They begin with the title of the practical, a brief introduction to put it into the context of the subject, and a description of the basic theoretical concepts related to the experiment they are going to see. The objective proposed by the experiment is indicated, the material used is shown, and then particular emphasis is laid on the steps to follow in doing the experiment. Finally, it is explained how the data should be analyzed and presented.
The methodological approach to the virtual practicals follows the guidelines for the design of virtual learning material proposed by Onrubia (Onrubia, 2005). Specifically, apart from exploiting the technical possibilities offered by ICTs, the materials should also be consistent with two features:
- "Logical meaningfulness": From a constructivist viewpoint, the virtual educational material developed must have a clear organization and structuring of its content. Logical meaningfulness needs to be ensured in the design phase, i.e., with the logical structure of the content. This aspect is taken into account in the organization of the various elements, activities, and sequences that make up the materials being developed.
- "Psychological meaningfulness": The materials should enable the learners to have cognitive elements available that they can relate to the content being studied. Psychological meaningfulness emerges during the students' actual learning process. Therefore, this phase of design will deal with how the material is integrated into our overall teaching methodology, in order to ensure that the students will have developed the cognitive resources needed to assimilate the new content and establish meaningful relationships.
One of the support platforms we use for the instructional videos is the Moodle virtual platform. As indicated by various authors (Coll, 2004; Donnelly, 2005; Mauri et al., 2005; Mauri, 2006; Onrubia, 2005), this can amplify the educational benefits the students obtain from the process, and provides support to them when they are working independently either individually or in groups.
This virtual laboratory in no way means that we are contemplating the disappearance of the real laboratory. Instead our intention is the integration of the two laboratories in our teaching practice. Indeed, it forms part of a teaching methodology which foresees increasing use of a wide range of learning tools that can facilitate successful adaptation to the European Higher Education Area.
Figure 9.2 shows several screenshots from some instructional videos about optical communications.
The materials developed are available at: http://grupoorion.unex.es.
- 2283 reads