A New Generation of Broadly Accessible Remote Engineering Laboratories

This project aims to serve the national interest by establishing a new generation of remote engineering labs that support underserved communities and schools with limited resources. Lessons learned during the COVID-19 crisis have helped educators rethink teaching practices that are sustainable and safe after the pandemic era. Offering hands-on engineering labs in off-campus settings has presented significant challenges to educators. By taking advantage of advances in cloud computing, implementing a remote hardware laboratory will allow students to experience a full-fledged remote experience without compromising what they could have learned and accomplished if they were physically present in the lab. This project will advance the potential of using remote laboratories for electrical and computer engineering students in embedded computing and wireless communications courses. The proposed work is expected to allow educators and institutions to rethink the delivery of hands-on engineering labs via a cost-effective, broadly accessible, and equitable solution. The complete remote lab solution, including hardware and software, has significance to underprivileged universities and K-12 education.

The project's goal is to develop a remote computing and wireless communication laboratory based on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and software defined radio (SDR) platforms; provide a full technical evaluation of remote solutions; and perform a comprehensive assessment of student learning and engagement in remote settings for these engineering technologies. The scope of the work is scalable, and the open-source hardware and software toolkit that will be developed can be deployed at other institutions, as well as K-12 and underserved community settings, to provide access to industry-grade hardware to all students. The sustainability plan includes a scalable solution that allows universities to pool their individual remote labs together to further increase access and decrease equipment costs and foster further collaboration among institutions by sharing resources and pedagogical content. The open-source remote labs will be disseminated via a highly modular repository (GitHub), and partnerships between schools will be encouraged to improve course materials, perform version control, pull requests, provide issue tracking, and use the course materials at their universities. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.