Online Laboratory Education 2020: Considerations of Methods, Tools, Results, and Insights in How (Not) to Improve Lab Work in Higher Engineering Education (OLÀ2020)
EDUCON2020 Special Session – Call for Papers

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Focus

Hindsight is easier than foresight: offering the chance to regain “20/20 vision” in 2020, the objective of the Special Track OLÀ2020 is to stimulate lively discussions and reflections of experiences in the successful as well as not so successful development, use and evaluation of laboratory work in engineering education.

Laboratories have been an integral part of science and engineering education for more than 150 years. A fundamental strength of many engineering courses is engaging students in engineering experiments and laboratory work to foster the connection between theories, empirical methods and their appropriate practical applications. These experiments range from a basic verification of fundamental laws to the analysis of complex relationships, as well as to solving real world engineering design and construction problems. Moreover, now an increasing number of cyber‐physical laboratory systems and laboratories can be used via laboratory portals in teaching, research, and as business cases for sharing platforms.

However, the special track intends to be not about laboratory technology, but about pedagogical usage scenarios of online laboratories and its evaluation. To this end, it intends to focus on topics of the constructive alignment of online experiments in education (i.e. learning objectives, activities and assessments) and their evaluation. Furthermore, it intends to discuss concepts of different engineering labs and their special characteristics. Finally, aspects should be carved out on how to achieve intended learning outcomes more effectively in the lab course.

Topics of Interest

• Evaluating Learning objectives, teaching and learning activities, and assessments tasks for experimental work
• Studies of effectiveness of different kinds of labs
• Methods and tools to evaluate and to assess labs in higher engineering education
• Laboratory experiences in and students’ opinions about remote, virtual, on-site, augmented, and hybrid laboratories
• Developing knowledge, skills and competences in engineering laboratories
• Command of technology as learning objective for preparing students for future challenges
• Integrating novel modes and pedagogical topics into lab work (e.g. In-verted classroom, problem-based Learning, employability, creativity, responsibility, social inclusion etc.)
• Future capabilities and constraints of labs in engineering education

Submission

All submission-related information can be found here: http://educon-conference.org/current/paper_preparation.php.

Technical Program Committee

Chairs

• David Boehringer, University of Stuttgart, Germany, david.boehringer@tik.uni-stuttgart.de
• Dominik May, University of Georgia, USA, Dominik.May@uga.edu
• Claudius Terkowsky, TU Dortmund University, Germany, claudius.terkowsky@tu-dortmund.de
• Valerie Varney, RWTH Aachen University, Germany, valerie.varney@ima-ifu.rwth-aachen.de

Members

• Alexander Kist, University of Southern Queensland, Australia
• Andrea Schwandt, Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Germany
• Anke Pfeiffer, HFT Stuttgart, Germany
• Dieter Uckelmann, HFT Stuttgart, Germany
• Janusz Zalewski, Florida Gulf Coast University, USA
• Judyta Franuszkiewicz, TU Dortmund University, Germany
• Karsten Lensing, TU Dortmund University, Germany
• Marco Winzker, Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Germany
• Sabrina Heix, TU Dortmund University, Germany
• Saliah-Hassane Hamadou, TELUQ University, Canada
• Sebastián Dormido, UNED, Spain
• Silke Frye, TU Dortmund University, Germany
• Sulamith Frerich, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
• Tobias Haertel, TU Dortmund University, Germany
• Tobias Ortelt, TU Dortmund University, Germany
• Uwe Wilkesmann, TU Dortmund University, Germany
• Willian Rochadel, UFSC Brazil

Important Dates