Renewable energy remote online laboratories in Jordan universities: Tools for training students in Jordan

摘要

The use of the concept of technology-enhanced learning is a design already applied in developed countries and incorporated as an active part of their educational models and curricular development. This is even more relevant in the case of eLearning, where these technologies correspond to remote/virtual laboratories. They are very useful in the fields of Science and Engineering. According to this, the current work shows the incorporation of this type of technology to traditional curricular schemes, with the aim of improving the effectiveness of learning. Another objective is to build reusable infrastructures among Universities, supported with public and private government resources. Specifically, this paper shows the development, implementation, and integration of remote renewable energy laboratories in Jordan, and how they have been used within the director plan of the Jordanian government for the promotion of renewable energies in that country. This plan includes not only the design of remote laboratories but also their integration into a curricular model. This integration is done at the level of online learning courses and pilot experiences in the development of these types of learning technologies. In a distance methodology environment, the instructors must design the course structure keeping in mind that students are online, but not face-to-face in the classroom. Additionally, they have to propose adapted resources (remote laboratories, guidelines, etc.) and content.The paper focuses on the incorporation of remote/virtual laboratories, showing how these labs were developed/integrated into online courses. To validate the incorporation of this type of resources in an environment usually not online, a set of surveys was designed to support a technology evaluation methodology (TAM, Technology Acceptance Model). This evaluation allows knowing the degree of satisfaction of the technology (remote and virtual laboratories as resources) using a structured experimental method (SEM, Structural Equation Models). As a result of the application of this experimental method, the calculated statistical data indicate that the use of remote and virtual laboratories improves the perception and use of virtual environments at a distance. Also, it can be indicated that these laboratories are presented as an essential resource to improve the quality of online teaching in engineering courses. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.