Online Labs: Accessing Labs anytime and anywhere

The Online Labs is an educational initiative pioneered by Amrita CREATE, the Center for Research in Advanced Technologies for Education at Amrita University in partnership with C-DAC, (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Mumbai, under a research grant from the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India.

CDAC is the premier R&D organization of the Department of Information Technology (DIT), Ministry of Communications & Information Technology (MCIT) for carrying out R&D in IT, Electronics and associated areas. It currently focuses on areas like Artificial Intelligence, Open Source Software Development, Educational Technology, Disaster Recovery, e-Governance and much more.

The University has developed over 130 science labs experiments in Physical, Chemical and Biology sciences for the students from classes 9 to 12 with content aligned to NCERT/CBSE and State Board Syllabus.

The Online Labs is based on the idea that lab experiments can be taught using the Internet, more efficiently and less expensively. The labs can also be made available to students with no access to physical labs or where equipment is not available owing to being scarce or costly. This helps them compete with students in better equipped schools and bridges the digital divide and geographical distances.

School students can access Lab Experiments anytime & anywhere without the need of physical labs in an efficient and cost effective manner through OLabs. #DigitalIndia pic.twitter.com/6cmxdn7oUa

— Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) March 27, 2018

The experiments can be accessed anytime and anywhere, overcoming the constraints on time felt when having access to the physical lab for only a short period of time.

The features include:

• Content aligned to NCERT/CBSE and State Board Syllabus.
• Physics, Chemistry, Biology Labs from Class 9 to Class 12. English and Maths lessons for Class 9 and 10.
• Interactive simulations, animations and lab videos.
• The concepts and understanding of the experiment.
• The ability to perform, record and learn experiments - anywhere, anytime, and individualized practice in all areas of experimentation.

The 'learning-enabled assessment' through Online Labs facilitates in the assessment of the procedural and manipulative skills of the experiment, the concepts and understanding of the experiment and a student's reporting and interpreting skills.

The development of online labs includes:

• The study and use of mathematical techniques to demonstrate the various complex functions in diverse areas of science.
• The labs make use of cutting-edge simulation technology to create real world lab environments.
• Thorough study and research is done by research personnel for a better understanding of the experimental procedures.
• Real lab scenarios are captured through a Slive demonstration of the experiment so as to assimilate information on the procedures and lab equipment.
• Visualization and development of the graphical symbols are done based on realistic situations and compared with the respective real equipment.
• Simulations are made interactive using various authoring tools, thus recreating and simulating a real lab environment.

The initiative is being funded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, India.