Issues Integrating Remote Laboratories into Virtual Worlds

Abstract

Laboratory work in education has long been recognised as providing real benefits to students. Increasingly, remotely accessible laboratories are being used for laboratory work in the sciences and engineering, providing students with remote access to real equipment while delivering additional benefits to institutions. There is an increasing focus on how these labs may improve laboratory learning outcomes. One potential enhancement, resulting from their mediated interface, is the ability to add contextual information to a laboratory activity. Virtual worlds have been identified as a rich environment for providing contextual information. However, the reported examples of real equipment laboratories integrated into a virtual world are specific to the laboratory. This paper describes a more generic approach to interfacing a virtual world, Open Wonderland, to laboratories which use the MIT iLabs platform. The paper reports on the issues involved in the interface and the strengths and limitations of this system.