The challenge of practical work in an eUniversity - real, virtual and remote experiments Martyn COOPER Knowledge Media Institute, Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, UK - MK7 6AA Practical work forms a key part of University level education in many subjects. Current and emerging trends in higher education, such as the increasing use of the WWW in educational delivery, the move towards a "flexible university" approach and the growing need to deliver life-long learning, presents challenges as to how provide such practical work to the university students of tomorrow. This paper outlines these challenges then points to likely solutions and critiques these. World-Wide-Web: the full version of this paper can be found at: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/pearl/publications/index.htm 1. Introduction Practical work is seen as a key component of many university level courses [1]. The educational objectives for providing such work include [2]: – To provide illustration and demonstration principals taught in lecturers – To motivate students and as a focus for student-student/student-tutor interaction – The development of practical skills seen as important for professionals in the subject area – The development of collaborative and team working skills – To introduce students to the "community of practice" [3], of engineers or scientists – To give a context for the teaching of data analysis All science and engineering students need to experience practical work and they further need to experience collaborative working mediated by information and communications technologies, as these are the contemporary experiences of working scientists and engineers. In many science or engineering courses such practical work would typically occupy about 35% of the students' scheduled time. The higher education sector is rapidly changing; the boundaries between distance learning and traditional teaching approaches are blurring in response to market pressures and given the increasing availability and use of Web based technologies and educational multimedia. There are increasing pressures on the provision of practical work in this context [1]. These come from a variety of factors including: – Increasing student numbers, or insufficient numbers for the viability of some activities – Professional institutions and prospective employers demanding students learn up to date techniques and to use modern equipment – Issues of student timetables that are increasingly more tailored and flexible – The increasing economic pressures on educational provision, always an under-resourced area 2. Responses to practical work provision in distance/eUniversity contexts There is a growing emphasis on the WWW as a delivery medium in higher education. Some pundits predict that by 2002, 75% of US based university courses will be primarily delivered by the WWW. Europe is undoubtedly more circumspect here but there are major eUniversity initiatives in most European countries and within 5 years it is likely that the normal experience of a university student will be that of an education predominantly mediated through their personal computer. So how will practical work be provided in this context? Access to practical work in distance education has traditionally been achieved by including simple home experiment kits or intensive residential courses. There is now an increasing trend to use multimedia science education packages or "virtual science". This approach has great value and if done well can be very powerful in elucidating complex scientific principles. However it generally focuses on the teaching of science facts and principles and not on the teaching of the process of scientific enquiry or engineering practice. There is a growing community of academics, information technologists and engineers who are exploring the provision of real-world teaching experiments that can be conducted at a distance, mediated over the WWW [e.g. 4, 5]. This potentially holds key advantages in terms of pedagogy, cost effectiveness, credibility and access to facilities.