PhD: ICTT@Lab: a software environment for the generation and execution of Remote Laboratory Scenarios

Student: Hacen BENMOHAMED LinkedIn

Supervised with Pr. Patrick Prévôt

Period: started in end of 2003, defended in January 2007

Report: available in French in PDF here

Current position: Senior Software Developer at SOTI

Communications:
> Journal paper: COQ 08,
> Conference papers: : LEL-02, LEL-03, BEN-04, LEL-04a, LEL-04b, BEN-05, LEL-05, BEN-06a, BEN-06b, GRA-06, COQ-07, BEN-08, LEL 08

Keywords: E-Labs, Remote Laboratories, E-Learning, System Engineering, Learning Management System

Summary

This thesis work falls within the field of e-learning and concerns the design of a generic Remote Labs environment in engineering sciences, accompanied by a methodology for remote technological devices. Until now, e-learning has been limited to fields where theoretical teaching takes precedence over practical teaching and hands-on work. To make e-learning a viable and widely used tool, Remote Labs must play a central role, as it meets a recognized need for practical activities in scientific and technical disciplines. This integration must be accompanied by the same ease of editing, use, and reusability as other, more conceptual content (remote lectures, remote tutorials, remote projects, etc.).

In this context, we propose a framework called ICTT@Lab (generIC framework for remoTe and virTu@l Laboratory integration), which can be integrated into an e-learning platform alongside an LMS compatible with the IMS-LD specification and providing the necessary services specific to the editing and production of Remote Labs. Based on ontologies specifying the classic components and functionalities of a technological device, scenario authors can now edit their educational scenarios in IMS-LD format and link them to a class of technological devices (real or virtual). This makes them compatible with any device associated with the same class, thereby allowing their production to be reused on other Remote Labs platforms. This entire architecture is accompanied by a complete editing chain dedicated to Remote Labs. The security of the device (a sensitive remote point) gives rise to an FMEA analysis and an interpretation of this aspect in our models. An experiment located in a Taguchi design of experiments was carried out on an automatic Remote Labs.