iLabs

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Introduction

iLab is dedicated to the proposition that online laboratories-real laboratories accessed through the Internet can enrich science and engineering education by greatly expanding the range of experiments that students are exposed to in the course of their education. Online laboratories (“iLabs”) experimental systems can be accessed through the Internet from a regular web browser.

Project Description and Vision
The iLab project at MIT is dedicated to the creation of a software architecture and a corresponding movement to develop and disseminate technology and pedagogy for sustainable and scalable iLabs so that they can be shared worldwide. The iLab vision is to share expensive equipment and educational materials associated with lab experiments as broadly as possible within higher education and beyond, thus profoundly changing the economics of engineering education. iLab teams have created remote laboratories at MIT in microelectronics, chemical engineering, and polymers.

Educational Need
iLabs allow students and educators in science and engineering to carry out experiments from anywhere at any time. Unlike conventional laboratories, bounded by location and proximity, iLab can be shared across a university or across the world.

More details about iLabs educational motivation and implementation can be found at http://icampus.mit.edu/projects/ilabs/.