Widget-Based Approach for Remote Control Labs Evgeny Bogdanov * Christophe Salzmann * Denis Gillet * * Ecole Polytechnique F´ ed´ erale de Lausanne, Switzerland (e-mails: evgeny.bogdanov,christophe.salzmann,denis.gillet@epfl.ch) Abstract: The paper presents a novel approach to conduct laboratory experiments in relation with the Control class taught at EPFL. The existing laboratory interface built as a Java applet, which allows students to access experimentation devices locally or remotely, is split into a set of light-weight Web applications or widgets. While achieving the same basic functionalities, these widgets provide user customization and extension. They are more flexible and add off- the-shelf interaction with other widgets and with the surrounding Web environment. The paper shows how remote experimentation devices are integrated within the Graasp platform, which provides knowledge management and enables collaboration among students. The educational scenario illustrates the technical challenges, and the solutions to tackle them are proposed and explained. Keywords: flexible education, remote labs, Web-based learning, widget, collaboration 1. INTRODUCTION Flexible education is a recent approach used by institu- tions to transfer knowledge from universities to students. In Gillet et al. (2005) the authors stated that both a flex- ible access to experimentation resources and availability of collaboration facilities are required. The flexible access to experimentation is provided to students with the help of virtual and/or remote laboratories. In addition, Web collaboration facilities are provided to support students while conducting an experiment. For example, when they produced resources such as simulation results or mea- surements, they can be saved in a shared space to be accessed by other students. These two major requirements shape the available solutions for remote experimentation laboratories. Many of the existing solutions are developed as complex monolithic stand-alone frameworks that handle both the remote experimentation aspect and the support for col- laborative work. However, according to Salzmann et al. (2012), this monolithic structure is difficult to adapt to varying user requirements, evolving curriculum and new technologies. In Salzmann and Gillet (2007) the authors explain that the high development overhead and the diffi- culties associated with the integration of the remote exper- imentation within existing Learning Management Systems (LMS) has refrained the spread and the acceptance of the common monolithic solution. Despite the limitations of existing solutions, the need and justifications for virtual and remote laboratories are still present. Salzmann et al. (2012) proposed a new paradigm to divide the current monolithic solution into smaller universal components (Web widgets) that users can re- aggregate dynamically to form a personal environment. Similarly, some intelligence and the flexibility are added to a remote experimentation server to provide more au- tonomous actions and to support a wider range of clients and protocols. The paper shows how this novel approach is used at Ecole Polytechnique F´ ed´ erale de Lausanne (EPFL) within the Automatic Control course. The existing remote lab implemented as a monolithic Java applet is split into a set of light-weight widgets according to OpenSocial apps specification 1 . Afterwards, the widgets are combined together to provide the same functionality that existed in the Java applet solution. These settings will be used within Automatic control course in the fall 2012 semester at EPFL. Turning monolithic application into a modular one with OpenSocial apps has many advantages. First, it brings more flexibility to teachers and students, since they are able to assemble modules on their own or replace some modules at their will. They can even extend the pro- posed set of modules with other modules such as a chat tool for communication or a collaborative formula editing tool. Additionally, maintenance and development costs are greatly reduced, since universities do not have to maintain a standalone application but rather relatively simple mod- ules and can reuse already existing modules. Second, the widgets use Web protocols which makes them portable be- tween different Web browsers (including mobile devices). Moreover, users do not have to install additional plugins such as Flash or Java. The last but not least, OpenSocial apps used as a modular unit represent one of the standards for widgets. This allows to bring a remote experimentation widget bundle into other Learning Management Systems that students may already use (e.g., Moodle 2 or Sakai 3 ). Furthermore, widgets can save and retrieve data to/from their Web platform. This feature helps users to directly 1 http://docs.opensocial.org/display/OSD/Specs 2 http://moodle.org 3 http://sakaiproject.org/