ABSTRACT

Online laboratories are experimental facilities that can be accessed through the Internet, allowing students and educators to carry out experiments from anywhere at any time. Remote labs enrich science and engineering education by vastly increasing the scope of experiments that students have access to in the course of their academic careers. MIT?s iLabs cyberinfrastructure is a robust, scalable, open-source cyberinfrastructure platform for remote lab access based on a web-services architecture. The goal of this project is to expand the audience for this important science education cyberinfrastructure to new audiences and new educational venues including: high school students and teachers both in traditional classrooms and in online courses, science museum visitors, and other informal science audiences. The Center for Educational Computing Initiatives at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is partnering with the Office of STEM Education Partnerships at Northwestern University to implement an international, cyber-enabled learning resource giving a broad population of learners access to remote labs in service of improved formal and informal STEM education. The goal of this effort is to create the iLab Network - a scalable and sustainable online network that is recognized as the premier site where students and scientists around the world come together to share remote labs, collaborate, and exchange associated curricular materials. The iLab Network will enhance STEM education and provide new cyberenabled research and learning opportunities to students, researchers, and informal science education programs around the world.

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