 So, welcome everybody and today's 11.30 presentation on the Emerging Technologies and Behaviour's Screen of the Oatsey Conference. Today, we have a 60-minute workshop presentation presented by Professor Cheryl Williams and Dr Alfred Chow, entitled, How to Boost Experiential Learning for Engineering Students Using Remote Labs, a step-by-step guide. I promise this to be a very interactive session today, so please do get involved, whether you're online or in person, and I shall now hand over. Awesome, thank you. So, it's lovely to see you. Thank you for choosing our session. We clearly thought we'd have more people because we laid out lots of tables. But it means you have our full and undivided attention. And also, we have some treats for you. And what we normally do, at least I normally do, is I have a bag of goodies for really, really good students. So, if you are, then you have a choice of something or a bag of goodies. So, I'm Cheryl, Professor Cheryl, just recently Professor. So, it's my first conference as a professor. So, it's awesome. So, thank you, thank you. Thank you very much and lovely to have those who are online as well. So, today, myself and Alfred, Ben, who is not here because he's getting married over the weekend. So, we excuse him for that. So, Alfred and I are going to take you through a little journey of what we've been doing. But before we do that, we're going to make sure that you guys, we are pitching it to the right audience. So, what we're going to do now, just tell you a little bit about what we're going to do. So, why are we going to have, why are we having this workshop? We're having it because we want to share what we've been doing. And we have this massive principle about reflect, inspire, share and power. So, whatever we do, we like to share with other people. And also, if you can't do the same as we can do, inspire you to do what you want to do. And then we're going to look a little bit on creating remote labs or a different activity, depending on your area. And then we're going to show a demo of what we've been doing. And then we're going to end with a question and a session. So, before we do that, we were hoping that there will be loads of you so you can high five each other. But, you know, whoever is there, just say hello. And basically, I just have to shout out to see. So, for the entire from engineering, is there any other engineers, engineers? OK, so what area are we then? What area are you? I work with Chase. So, professional services type of thing. Professional services. And I know you. Just hold on. Online learning now. I'll give you a mic. Sorry, I don't want to miss you. Online learning for law students. Law students, OK. And which area are you? Healthcare technologies. OK, good. Keep going. Yeah, yeah, I'm just general learning technology across the board. OK, good. So we know how to pitch the session. I'm in online learning that my background is law and linguistics. So this is going to be a very interesting session. So we're going to talk a little bit of engineering, but we're not going to do too much engineering. So if there is anybody who you know, for example, if you if you support somebody who is in engineering and wants to talk to us about engineering, then they can contact us and then we can do that. Yeah, so what we want to do now, talk a little bit about our vision and something, a quote that I like. And, you know, it's quite typical to put a quote. So our quote today is tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn. And basically what we want to do today is talk a little bit about experiential learning. And the concept of experiential learning, I'm a big believer for myself. I learned best when I'm doing something. So you can tell me and I, but if I start to do it, I really, really get involved. And for engineering students, that's something that they do as well. At least I find that in my group. So I teach part a first year students and we try to get them really engaged in it. So we talk about experiential learning and it's cross the board. So if you're in law or if you're just about online, when you're designing courses or designing material, it's good to think about looking at the famous cobalt experiential learning cycle and basically we, this underpins all we do. And when we will have the presentation, so you can see the link to the to the slides. And we talk about that in terms of what we do, how we do it. So one of the things that we talk about is for us is we have the lab experience and they come to the lab, they sit, they do the lab and they try it. But sometimes that's just not enough. So there's an experience there, but then we want them to think about and reflect on what they've learned. Then we want them to go off and really conceptualize it and build on their own. And then we want them to experiment. So one of the things that we're going to talk about today is how do we make sure that cycle continues? So one of the things I do with my students and Alfa that I teach the same group that we give them this, this, this model so they can do that when they're learning. So we give them this model, they have the QR code, they have the link to the website. And they basically what we want them to do with that is to go off and really think about how they're learning and how they're adapting because we have so many for our students, they go off and they need most of them want to be accredited and our accredited body wants students to be able to be thinkers, creators, going into a world. And we talk a little bit about that in a bit. So today to engage in the session, we created a wonderful padlet. So that's a QR code for the padlet so you can go on there. It's not pretty yet, but I'm hoping you will help to make it pretty. And if you really wanted the sheet that's on the table, you can download the sheet from there and you can use it and you can share it with other people as well. So this is the sheet looks on. I'll tell you in a minute, so see if you can get to it. Hopefully that takes you there. Anybody got there? Awesome. Good. OK, so we'll use that show today, but you have it, you have the link to it now. So you can go on and add after you think about today. So we have a long time. So something that is really precious for academics, learning technologists and everybody is time. So we have an hour together. So let's use that you can use it to think of something that you really want to do and plan it. So even though the thing is here and talks about remote labs, maybe that's not your thing, but there's something to do. We want to use this session to have a think about the process of developing something. So this is what is on there. It has, you know, your big dream. So, for example, we we have the remote lab as ours and we'll tell you a little bit about our story in a bit and how we build it. So you can take that away and have a go with that and have a go with it. It's on the planet as well. So you can download a copy of the as well. So no doubt throughout the whole of this session so far, the conference, we've heard about technology. We've heard about digitalization, AI and all of that. So for us as engineers, we are teaching students we're going to go into what we call the new market. And this market is rapidly changing. We see what's happening in the last two years, which actually BT and all the different generative areas and so on, it's moving very quickly. So we can't stay at the same pace that we've been working with students. We have to try and help and develop them. So what we've been doing is thinking about how we can do that. And this is what we're going to share with you today. So if you're familiar with industry five point all lots of people are talking about four point all, but we have skipped forward and we've gone to industry five point all. There's a wonderful video that you can YouTube video that you can watch that shows the guy from the European Union talking about it. And basically is what's going to happen next. So we talked about industry four point all and that was digitalization. So everything's going digital. And then we talk about industry five point all. And in this one, we're talking about how can we integrate with all the different technologies? So it's kind of human centric. How can we relate to that? How can we make things resilient and how can we be sustainable? And we talk about all the sustainable goals and so on. So that's a really interesting video. If you're interested in hearing about that. So what we do is we follow industry and then we train students to be there. Because if a student come to me in first year, they might not go into industry after three, four or five years. So whatever I teach them need to be relevant for going forward. And so this this slide is from my presentation for professorship. So I thought it was well received. So maybe you guys want to see this slide as well. So this is the slide. I love this code, this code that talks about how we integrate and how education can fit in. So we want to make sure that we get ahead, we push ahead and we make sure we are creating the space for the students. So that's the context of which we are running our session today. I'll get you working in a minute. So we talked about law, but today you might not do any labs in law. Do you do what kind of do you like workshops and so on? Is that what you do? Seminars, it might depend that you might do mock trials. OK, mock trials. OK. So that's yeah, mock trials. OK, and you are in health care. Is it? Yeah. So we sometimes do coding workshops and using the technology and sort of idea creation and generation sort of things. OK, awesome. Thank you for sharing that. So just to add on those points as well, it's not only limited to the technical or engineering projects or labs, but this can also have the same manage or application in other sectors or in other disciplines. For example, in group work, you can apply some of the concepts in particular in terms of the teamwork, the collaboration and how you can also envision how you can assess, make an assessment on some of these things. So those are the common grounds for all interdisciplinary aspects. Right. Sorry to interject. Oh, that's perfect. Thank you so very much. So in terms of for us, we look at labs. So normally, traditionally, you have a physical lab that you're there hands on and there's lots of study about actually doing hands on. But you for you mentioned online learning. So lots of people can't be there. So they might have a virtual or augmented reality system or simulations. So we have that and I'll tell you a story in a minute. But there's also possible to have a kit in our university and somebody control it. So we're quite excited because we have kids that people are controlling from Egypt, from Jamaica, from America somewhere. So we have a kit in our labs and people can actually control it. And that's what we want to share with you today. But while we're sharing that, we want you to think about the things that you do and how you can create that interaction if people are not in the room. So I'm going to give you a few minutes now to discuss with the people around you and if you're online, you can use the the QR code and go to the padlet. So hopefully you were able to do that. And on the padlet, you can write some information. I'll try and bring that up in a minute so we can see what you're doing. So if you're beside somebody or you want to write online, just think about in your in your area, what are some of the things you do traditionally in person? How could you do that virtually or how could you do that remotely? So have a go with that for five minutes. We'll come around and have a chat with you. If you're online, please go and use the padlet. I'll open that up now on screen. So hopefully if you're online, you can see the padlet and you can have a go at filling it in. The ones in the room are having a chat, so. Just a third of a sign. I'm not on the stage. Yes, I think we know what the... Can I join in? Yes, yes, please. I join in. I'm going to go to, you know, for the 70 degrees where they, you know, apply that science degree and, you know, part of the students have to have lab experience and have to show evidence. You know, I'd love to do it, but... Yeah, exactly. And then we've got no way to get around the fact that you wouldn't have to be disagreeing on campus. Unless you're lucky enough to have a senior roommate. OK. That way, which is why I'm interested in seeing what the kind of thing does. Yeah. And obviously then, with increasing cohort, you've got that space kind of contrained. Absolutely. And having to run several times because there's not enough space to run one big lab with all the students. Yeah, how do you make it come that? Yeah, that's the opportunity. I think that's a very good point. Mm-hmm. I can list that to the challenge which we had previously. We shared quite a couple of pandemics. Well, it was inconceivable. Oh, no, no, no, it's fine, it's fine. But at the same time, we are at full case. OK, well, thank you for the knowledge. Students in environments such as the lab and subjects which are taught with the aspects of lab as part of the coursework as well. So in terms of assessment, that needs to be... OK. So... Oh, yes. So our story, visual transformation, working in both traction in terms of the disability of having to run those labs despite all those challenges. Yeah. We mentioned about the large crowds. So in terms of timetable, it's no longer limited to the timetable slot. But that can also be 20, 4, 7. And with students, they tend not to like to run or work during timetable sessions or something. But they try for their own time. And we found quite a consistent of that is that they can have other opportunities which they can now interact with the labs. I guess. Yeah, so it's really interesting. So we have the same thing. So I'm coming back to teach some sort of a language. And we were meant to do... I've been able to do that. So are you telling stories? So could you create a space where they could share these stories? Like, there's many videos. Yeah. Exercise, science labs and VO2 match testing. Yeah, that's the problem. We need to use a prepared tool for that. Yeah. So there's a lot of our students experience labs not in a professional environment. Yeah, yeah. Here's to broaden your horizons. There's quite a translational role in health care technologies. And it's really about being able to provide a taster. Yeah. And I think that would work quite nicely in this sort of environment. Because if there's a taster, they don't need to try to text for a minute. They just don't understand the vague principle behind it. And if that's with some therapy with that, it's a bit cheaper to send out on the post. Oh, right. Yeah. What about VR? Yes. And you can put a prompt in. It gives you something. OK. This one's really interesting. We for this one, it's we haven't really used AI. It's a slight imitation of that. These same students do coding. And they can, I think they're a consider and hold. They can use them to prompt engineering and use AI to prompt. And because you don't want them to be cheating, you want them to be using it effectively. So, yeah, they can just get back on the screen. And actually, you can't be perfect for that. And in a way, that is a lab in itself. No. But then the students, they're not on campus. Do they have their own VR kit? Exactly. And if you can put some of the stuff that you own or anything. Yeah. Yeah, but I wonder if there's a way of translating it so that it's not VR, but you can still do like a virtual tour in a way. The same. I don't know. I mean, I don't, I mean, I mean, Google Cardboard is a big thing. Not long ago, it actually disappeared. Google Cardboard. So one more minute, one more minute. Basically, a piece of cardboard to fold. Stick your mobile phone in. And basically, what it does, stop two lenses in and basically turn your mobile phone into a VR header. Basically put it on, looking at your phone and you've got that 3D image. So you've got the whole VR stuff but it's using your own mobile device. Wow. And it's like pits and you can buy them for a week. The cheap just, you know, people would give it away. And all there was was a bit of cardboard from two lenses. Wow. But yeah, I've not heard or seen them for ages. Seems to have, like, disappeared. That sounds really beautiful, but I haven't seen anything on the budget. Yeah. Yeah, so the other thing that we did was so a couple of years ago I was teaching language. OK. So seems that we've had some really interesting discussions. So that's really good. So I'm going to bring us back together and you can tell us a little bit about some of the things that you've been discussing. I heard a little bit about VR over here. Heard about scenario learning, scenario space learning. So what we're looking at now is quickly think about some of the advantages and disadvantages of both. So for us, we looked on that and we kind of made a table of what we thought were some of the advantages and disadvantages. So some of these you might have spoke about in terms of timetabling, in terms of the cost, in terms of technical support. So for us, the lab is we have a nice love the lab, but we share this lab. So our students get three hours in, then somebody come out and another group come in. So some of the things we needed to think about is how can we get them to immerse themselves in the lab, but they can't do it in three hours. So what can we do to help that? So you mentioned VR. So we have VR and we've just won some massive bid for having digital labs. And we're going to have some massive VR lab, which I'll be working on. So maybe another conference I'll tell you a little bit about how we've been doing that. So what we want to tell you now is our story. So the challenge we had, let me start with MSc students and Alpha's going to tell you a little bit about the undergrad students. So the challenge we had, we had a MSc course that we were also running completely distance learning or we are doing in parallel. So students could do our course without coming on campus for the whole three, four or five years or whatever number of years they do the course. And because it's an engineering course, one of the things that we always get a question about is how do they do the lab? What do they do for the lab? So that was something that I got because I was a tutor on this course when I started my PhD. That was a question we got all the time. And we had at the time, the existing lab, which I'll show you. And then we had some simulation, but that didn't just feel right. And I thought we're engineers, we should be able to build something. And that's how it comes. We found an opportunity for us to build remote lab. So I'll tell you, take it to our story. And so we basically had this MSc course. There are lots of people, people doing it distance learning. As I said before, and we wanted to make sure that they were able to do it. So one of the course, which is my, this is what I did my PhD in. So I did my PhD in renewable energy. And I looked on photovoltaics panels and we looked at all the different effect. The effect that I did was angle of incident, like what pitch should go out. So I was very, what do you call it, tied to this topic. So when the opportunity came, I wanted to do something in this area because I knew it well, at least I thought I knew it very well. So I could use that. So what happened is we had this physical lab. So a physical lab been running since 1993. So that's the physical lab. Basically come in the lab room and then you'll see on the picture, how they interact with the lab. So they come in, they interact with the lab and so on. So that is fine. So the students who are on campus doing it full time, they have access to the lab. I think I need to upload the pictures because we have updated our kit. So we have some new fancy shiny kit. So I need to take some picture next time it runs again. And then one of our department, maybe you know a little bit about that Rich, when our department that used to help academics create activities, they created for us these virtual simulations. And they were fine, they were running, they were doing really well. And basically what happened is the students get to pull across the light and turn it on and change the panel and so on. So we thought, let's go big. So you know, that's why I love that thing about big dream. Let's go big. So what could we do? Could we recreate what we had in terms of the physical and create it virtually? And then we broke down the things that we needed to do. So step one is to have this vision of what you want. And then we're going to think about how to break it down. What is it that you're trying to replicate? So you talked about storytelling, break down the different facets of it. You're talking about workshops and seminar, break down. And a lot of people had to do that during COVID. How do we translate? So we took the looks on the lab and we thought, okay, what are some of the things that we need to replicate? We needed the hardware. So we needed some kind of hardware. We needed the software that was able to integrate and students facing. And then we needed a system where they could log in and book because of course we had one equipment. So they had to book to use it at different time. So you have a think about the things that you would do with your activity and what are the things that's needed. So that's what we did for hours and Alpha's going to come and tell you a little bit about undergrad. And then we'll share a little bit about how we actually achieve that. Okay. So with the undergraduate storyline, it actually goes back to the time where hardware was mainly emphasized as the teaching tools back then. But with the challenges which we first, for example, we discussed over here like the pandemic, it was impossible for students to use such equipment. Not only if they were to use it, but it had to be quarantined for at least 24 hours at some instances, which meant a lot of timetabling issues as well associated with that. So we thought about how we can utilize technology to still achieve the main objective of having to run experimental work where students can now link the theoretical part, taught in lectures, plus the physical elements or the physical concept in real life. As engineers, scientists, we are always practical people. So the board which I'm holding here, I'm sorry for those who might be online, we might not be able to say it, but it's a board which which consists of different IC chips. Basically, it's a loss of transistors integrated in there, which forms the basic building blocks of logic gates. And for students who would have already covered the fundamentals of this, they fly very well when it comes to the theoretical concept. But we always hear the wow moment when they actually toggle the switches or operating the hardware, seeing it in real life and in person. So it's something which is quite rewarding for us as educators as well as for the students. So what we have done then with the undergraduate storyline is to realize the same accomplishment, but using technology. That's where the board which I will invite you later on to see, but that's the one which is portrayed on that board, which you can also have a look at. So the main concept around that board is basically to run some simulations. We'll talk about simulations or way in which you can realize some circuits in a environmental which can model circuits. And then we can deploy that particular circuit to a hardware platform where students can now access the physical switches or physical buttons on that particular hardware to achieve the same objective as they have done on this board which I am holding. But you may now question the remote aspect of it. We can also apply some electronic tools to also link that particular board or access that particular board remotely. And one of our colleagues who is not here Ben, is also working on a platform which involves the use of LabView. But we are going to utilize some of the concepts which are already built in the software to realize the same accomplishment. A bit of some images and pictures portraying all different circuits, which I would be happy to discuss those in detail, in depth for those who would be focusing on the technical aspect of this. But this discussion here is mainly focused on trying to encompass everyone irrespective of which particular discipline you are in. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. So one of the things that we did was to bring to create our little architect, look at what we want to do and break it down. So this is something I would recommend at the back of the paper. You are to draw yours or think about yours. But when you go off, you can have a think about what it is that's happening. Break it down into step by step because then you can start to analyze each section, what do you need for each section. And the second activity was about thinking about the barriers, what you need. So one of the things that Alfred didn't say is that when we COVID hit, our module is second semester. So COVID hit February, March. So we were right in the middle of our modules and then we went, okay, what should happen now? But because I was teaching in that module and I had experience with the remote lab, I was able to say, let's just get some money. So before I didn't tell you how we got money to build the first lab. So what we did was, at the end of the, I don't know if you have that in your company or your institution, but at the end of the financial year, there's like, who would like to bid for some money? The minute they say that, I'm in. Rich knows me, I'm like, in. I have a plan. I even think about it before they even ask. So if you haven't done that, I would say, have a little thing in the back pocket. So when they open their mouth and say, there's some money, you go, oh yeah, thank you. So we had that. So we basically said, we need this money. So we got some money to build the one remote lab, the PV lab, but for the one for the students, we had 139 students. So we need to figure out how we could access that. So we went and we pitched and we got money for 20 of these kits. So we managed to get students to work in teams, on teams, and then we use what we call Imperial. So the students could actually log. So we set up these kits on the computers in the lab, because they would normally be there in the lab. And I think I remember the year when we did it, it was Valentine's weekend. It was me, Alfred and Ben, and we were like, the kids came the Friday, the lab was the Monday, and we had set everything up. It was an intense weekend. But the Monday, we were ready and students were all over the world and they were logged into the lab. They could see, there's a camera on it, you could see, and they could see what's happening and they could actually operate the kit from wherever they are. So that's one resource. Then it's people, building. This one was easy, because it was off the shelf. We bought it from National Instrument and we adapted. So one of the things they think about is, what are the things you already have that you can adapt to use? For us, an engineer is something that plugs in and has a network. If it has a network that's plugged in, you can turn it into remote lab quite easily because you can do some kind of interface in whatever software or AI you want to use. So basically what you can do is think about that. So we did that and what happened was when we ran it for the first year, we always asked students for feedback. And one of my wonderful students, everybody's from India and he said to me, Cheryl, that experiment was lovely, but guess what? I can make it better. And I went, of course you can. Therefore, we will apply together for teaching innovation award. So I got the student and we applied for teaching innovation award with myself, Alfred and Ben and that student worked for us the following summer and we expanded because he didn't like the fact that he couldn't do anything with the camera and he's expanding it. And then the next year, the same thing happened. So have a think as well about how you can engage student in the process, how we can engage the academics in the process, how we can engage your people that you look after in the process. So because you want to hear the things that they do. So he was very instrumental in moving it forward. And it helped him when he went for his placement. He said to me, I got my placement and I'm in a secret research and development. He couldn't even tell me what it is that he was doing. But he was so proud, but he was able to express to them what he did with our activity. And they put him somewhere hidden that he can't even tell me what he's doing. But this is what we mean about experiential learning for a student. The fact that he was able to do that means he could go off and do something else. So we tried to empower and inspire them to be able to think and how to use. So that's how we got... Yeah, on that point as well, we always consider our students to be the co-designers for our programs. I know they won't take the central role in the designing of the programs, but them to have a measure of input to it, which we know that when they participate, the engagement is tremendous, because that's what they want. Yeah, it's something which you can also think about as well. Okay. So we've done well with timing because we said we were gonna have a five-minute break and then you could have a chocolate. So because you've been so good, you can help yourself if you'd like to. There's some extra ones that were for prizes, but you're all good, so you all get prize. So we put them over there. You just have stretch of feet for a second and then we'll wrap up and show you a demo of these things. So help yourself with what is here. Don't be shy. Yeah. I don't have the whole, we did for every kind of situation that you can think of, there is something. Yes. So please, yeah, please just help yourself. Yeah, go for it. Look at that. There you go. Help yourself. So please have a go. I'm sorry though, it's online. You're gonna have to find something at home for yourself. Please take a picture and say, look, this is, am I all right to take a picture while you guys are there? Yeah. Good. We're in there now. Then we can do a group picture as well. Yeah. Okay. Alpha, you want to be, I had to realize that. Do it all the time. But you can help me. If I do anything stupid again, you can take it. Cause my arm, do you want to take, do a picture? Ryan? Yeah. Do you want to take a picture? Yes. Go in there. Yeah. Yeah, you can help yourself. Please don't be shy cause we all have to take them back and give them to put them on in the PhD room. Yeah. So how have the other bits of things that you've gone to been so far? Good. Oh. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you. That's really kind. Yes. Yes. The simulation of it. Yeah. Virtually before you actually come here. Yes. Yes. Yes. That's exactly what we're trying to do with ours. So we give them all a Arduino kit. And then we set at the back of the room, we have five of these that are constantly on. Some of them have the Arduino kit. Some of them have the, most of them have a FPGA. So they can create their own things in it. So, and they can just double. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Cause what you find happening when they do that is that they try stuff. So they might be a little bit nervous on the kit itself. But when they're in the simulation world, they can just go try what happens. And when we had this year, we had a student and she was going through it. And I said to her, is it working? I said, I'm not sure. I'm like, have you tried it? I said, hmm, I'm not pressed it yet. I said, just press it. See what happens is, you know, if it works, it works. If it doesn't work, we'll figure it out. And she was like, hmm. And then she pressed it. And she was like, okay, I'll try again. And then before we knew it, I was done talking to another student. And I went, yeah. And I looked up and she was there going, you want to work? And she tried something as it works. You know, you want them to have that kind of as Alfa said, a wall moment where they go, oh my God, I've just created something. Oh my God, I've just made something different from what I was taught. And that's the kind of thing that we try to inspire in our students to get them to that stage. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. The same with our students because what you tend to happen, Mahpe, you said that that's happening in IT because it's something that we try to inspire the students to do what we say. So if it doesn't work, what are you going to do? Yeah. Because you're not going to get the same problem all the time, even in law, you're not going to get the same incident. But what can you learn from what you did before? How can you change it in healthcare? What can you do differently? So I think what one of the things is about this ability to really try and get into it and change and see what the change means. And if it doesn't work, try something. And if that doesn't work, try something else. And keep going until you go, when I see a problem like this, I know what to do. When I see a problem, I just do this one. And that's the kind of feeling that we want them to get and be able to do. Awesome. So everybody nice and refreshed then. Had some things. Oh, you know, you can write some feedback for us. Yes. I'm just trying to play with these things. So we just had this discussion anyway about how we engage students. So basically from our discussion, for those online, we're talking about engaging students in the process, but also engaging them in making sure that they get from it what you want. So engaging in the process for us every summer, we have interns. So we have summer interns. So I don't know if you have that or if you can bring some students in to have a go for two weeks. We have them for like 10 weeks. And we will give them a small project. And these are like first year students for us. And what some of them say is that it really helps as I said to you about the student earlier, really helps because when they go for their placement, they can actually say, I've done something, I've built something. So get students involved, get some of the other tech people involved and so on and spirits around. Bless you. So being hands on is something really important to me. And to us. And so now I'm going to tell you a little bit about our rig. So, and then Alfred's going to tell you about the other ones. And we're going to demonstrate it for you. Can you can ask some questions? So this is our rig. So this is the whole thing. But let me break it up for you. So remember what we said about the PV ones and PV ones. Is there anybody here with PV panels on the roof? Just me then. So basically what you need is, it needs to be at the third angle, which is what I did my PhD on. But then you need to decide what's happening when the light shines on it, when there's no light or if it heats up. So we get the students to do that. And over the years I've had lots of project students, BSEs and MSE students do other things. So I have a student last year who built a shadow that comes across it. So I think I don't have a picture of that today, but it just comes across it like that and shade some of it. So you can see what happens if it's shaded. So this is the kit and I'll break it down quickly for you. So we have a turntable, which magically turns if you press a button and it gives you two different types of panel. What you're seeing at the moment that yellowish oranges, I don't know what color you're seeing it as. That's the only thing to decide what we're getting in terms of irradiance sensors. And then we have what shines the light. So we have a series of LED lights and that is what gives us our, and we've made it such that it gives us in watts per meter square similar to what we get from the sun. And inside here is the kit of all the things that we have. And I love to show this one because I have a quick story to tell you. We had this one because I said, of course we don't have enough money. We had a small budget. So we kind of rely on people and people in kind to do stuff for us. So we had MSE students, BSE students, the lab checks, everything was built in-house at Loughborough. And so that green one is at the top. We had an MSE student build it for his MSE project, plugged it in, it didn't work. And he tried again, he tried again and got really frustrated. And then I said, hold, everybody hold on. I did electronics in for my BSE. I can do this, but never told anyone that when I did electronics, the boys, sorry, males in the room, didn't want us, the girls, to do any of the soldering. We had to do the presentation. We had to do the do-do-do. So to be honest, I didn't really have a lot of the skills. But during my PhD, I had to do all of that. So I said, just give me. So I bought the whole set of things again. I sat down, I don't have a picture of me sitting up when I sat down, built it, plugged it in, worked straight away. And it has been working. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's been working since about 10 years now. So yeah, so it's possible to do, expand yourself beyond what you think. So that's, I love to show that and talk about that. And then of course you need an interface where the students can really interact with it. Oh yeah, so I do have a picture of the shading stuff. So that's the shading stuff, that little black thing. So it slides across and shades like a small area. Cause if you live somewhere and there's a tree or another building, you need to know what happens to the performance as well. So yeah, so that's some of the things we do. And then this is just a picture of the student using it. So what I'm going to do now, so I'm going to magically show you what happens with it. So fingers crossed everybody, are you ready for this? And then I'm going to hand over to Alfred who's going to show you his. So this is it in terms of what students see. It's quite dark at the moment. What happened is we have a little lamp at the top. So the students will use it in the night to see, but maybe there's nobody in the room at the moment. And at the back of it here, this one is the booking system. So if they have never used it before, they need to book in. So I booked it today for me to be using it from nine o'clock to four o'clock. Students usually get two hours and they can rebook and so on. So here is it. So in this space is the camera. So we're going to get a live feed in a minute. And then we show a little bit about what happened. So we can change the radiance at the moment it's 10. And then if I switch the light on, then voila. In Loughborough, the light has just turned on. So wherever you are, you can turn the lights on and you can change the radiance. So I'll show you how that works in a minute. So we turn the lights on. So you can see now that there's this thing that tells you you're measuring 10. And this little bit here is just showing the homogeneity across the panel. And then the students need to decide which panel they want to use. So they go here and choose device one. Then life goes off. And if we could have a light up cross, you would see it's turning a little bit. You might be able to see it. I should have thought of that before I left today to put the light up. So it's turning to that panel. We'll see it in a minute. So there's a live feed from the camera there. And once it turns the light back on, we are now magically on device one. So they can turn to device one and then they can actually measure what's happening on device one. So let's do a measurement quickly. And then I'm going to give Alfred a chance to do his. So I'll put it a little bit higher and no worry about people there because we've screened it off so they can't affect anyone. And then basically what we do is take a measurement. So the person measurement and they get an IV curve. So this is a characteristic of a PV panel and the students get to do that from wherever they are. And they magically have a curve and they can download that on their computer and they can analyze it and so on. So this is what they do. And then the idea is to do a second one. So let's do one at 200. And then measure it again and then compare and they download and keep going and they make up their own experiments. So this is really good, especially for MSE students because then they can make up their own experiment and then explain what they want to do. Just want to change that to zero. This mouse isn't there though. So you can see the red, the white one is the newest one. So we've doubled the irradiance. So this is what we expect. So when they do this experiment, they download and they do the analysis and explain if they get what they expect from theory. And then they can also change the temperature. And basically with the temperature, they'd have to switch the temp value on. Let's see, it's currently at 33 and we want to set it to 40. So we've set it to 40 and then you will slowly see the temperature rising. So basically we have a kit where you send the current in one direction, it heats up, send the current in other direction, it cools down. It's like a Peltier device. And basically you see now that the red one is our kit trying to get up to 40. So the students get to see all of that, they get to interface with that. And we've currently, during lockdown, managed to get them to work as groups. So they're on teams and they chat to each other, work with each other and so on. So this is the demo of our remote lab. Any questions before I hand over to Alfred who's going to show us the undergrad one? Cool. The students remote desktop into the BC. No, so I've just remote desktop into it today but the students go in through a national instrument runtime engine so they can go through a webpage because we have to, this is a need to say barrier is you need to get approval of IT services. So one of the things that we had to do retrospectively because I forgot to include about the bigot in and I was told off properly. So don't do that. I was told off properly. So basically we have a port. So we have two ports, one for the booking system on for the lab. So the students actually have a login that they can use. One of the things we're trying to improve because they have to download a runtime engine is we're trying to get an IP enabled camera which we're waiting for approval. And then we're going to stream it so they can just get on a webpage. We're going to get a HTTPS page where they can just go on the page. So at the moment they have to do us one extra step. Students who can't do that, do that what I've just done and remote desktop in. So we have another computer there and they can remote to that one and operate from that one. So there's a lot of work around. So when you're doing and thinking about your idea, your solution, think about some other things that might come up and how you can navigate that space. This was one of the ones and wonderful IT people after I apologize and beg for mercy, we were able to get to a port which is closed off as soon as they're not using it. So yesterday I had to go and reopen everything so that I could show it to you today because we use this lab in, should I open yours for you? Yes, that's fine. Okay, we use this lab for semester one and in semester two we try to use it for other universities so other universities can use this lab as well. And we try to use it as a demo. So Alfred is going to show you his lab and then we're going to wrap up by just having a quick chat. Is that okay? Awesome. Good. With regards to the undergraduates, we don't have a booking system but we've got the IT on board, quite a bit all. Right. Where is their involvement? Well, it's regarding the availability of remote desking to various machines scattered around the university so they've got a login system they can precisely know who is logged in each of those machines and also students can also tell whether the machine is in use and hence they can move on to the next one. So the same applies to the machines which are in the labs. As soon as the machine is logged in then it's not in use until the next time the other student uses. So as Cheryl alluded to, we've dedicated some machines specifically for students to use post and pre lab sessions. And one of the things which we have found again is a collaboration and thanks to Ben in particular who has really pioneered the aspect of having a pre lab session which does tells nicely to the aspect which you mentioned earlier on about simulations. So students before they actually get to the lab they would have a preview in the simulation environment of what to expect. And then in the lab it's mainly now pressing touching experimenting with the hardware and the cut. And in a nutshell, it now cements the theoretical aspects and the practical concepts in one at the end. I've showed you a simple circuit earlier on which consists of the basic building blocks. When it's all those building blocks doesn't mean anything to students just a logic circuit or logic gate or device. But it is only when you combine more than one or two of those circuits to make useful systems or useful devices. And one of the devices which we teach them in undergraduate is counters. Thank you, Cheryl. It's counters. So it's amazing with one of the group projects which we also run related to this about the counting in which we have asked students to design a rotating number which cycles their registration numbers. And it's unique in the sense that each particular student has his or her own ID number. And one has got to do it rather than comparing with someone although there might be some similarities but one has got to go through the process as well. So how do they do that process? They do it in a simulation environment such as this one here. So this one here is a slightly complex circuit. What this complex circuit consists of it consists of the elements or the buttons which can be assessed on the hardware as well as which can be assessed remotely. So the buttons which are alluded as the PCB, diode 01, 02, et cetera, et cetera are the ones which you can access remotely. As you can see, some of those buttons are associated with a basic logic guess which has got an operation of an O. So it means either of those would still give you the same operation. So whether the student is in remote or whether the student is accessing in person, they can also utilize the same circuit when they are in person as well. That's one of the advantages of such a facility. So I've already connected to this computer which is in Bluffbrand, about 46 miles away from here. Yeah, the distance doesn't matter. It can be anywhere, yeah. So touch wood, hopefully it should be all running and okay. There's some part testing which is running in the lab. So I've been already informed if anything goes wrong, please, we raise our hands. It might be that we might have unplugged something or might be testing something. So yeah, good. So the platform, which links the buttons which I have alluded to, is this one which you can see here, okay. And I'm going to run that particular module which is integrated within the National Instrument LVS unit. And LVS is an acronym for Engineering, Laboratory, Visual Instrument CELT. Oh yes, right. Now, good. Now, I would like now to actually see that board remotely. So I'm going to open up the camera, okay, which we do. Let's hope so, yeah. There is the board now, okay. So it's similar to the one which is over there. So that count is already indicating a count of four after this program has been exported or deployed on the board. And I've programmed in such a way that this button seven, if I go back to the program again, for those who might be interested in the technical aspect, the button seven, as you can see here, that's the one which is the clock. It's the stage which is, and it's got an inbuilt clock, this particular board. So that clock, when I toggle it, is going to indicate the counter after the main counter element. And then we've got the display. Then the display is the seven segment display which is indicated over there. In between, we have got a circuit which updates the counter. Basically what it says is, what is the existing value? What should I go to the next value? Or where should the next element displayed at? All that process is done under this yellow or orange aspect, which is called the FPGA. Again, it's an economy, which stands for field programmable gate arrays. Basically, it's an arrangement of transistors without any connections to it, meaningful connections to it. But when we deploy it, it's so intelligent that it now links all those particular logic gates in that particular fashion or is described in your simulation as you can see there. So I'm going to toggle button seven now. So button seven is physically this one here. And unfortunately, I had to manage to convince someone to be in person in Loughborough so that you can actually see toggling as well. You can see the counter was in person, but hopefully you will trust me that I'm going to toggle it here remotely. And when I toggle it, you're going to see an indication that it is active. Okay, so toggling it now. So it is button seven, moving the mouse, there it is. Okay, so when I toggle it, it's now incremental five. Toggling it again, it's incremental six and so forth. So I'm controlling that remotely. And I can reset it using a button one. So resetting it, my button one and four is been set as LED resetting is button six. So it's back to zero. And then I can start toggling it again. And then I've got the increment starting all over again after the reset, and then it's now incrementing as you can see for there. Okay, for more technical aspects or questions related to this, we will share our conduct details for those who might have in depth as well for other discussions. But any questions so far? I'm cautious of time, sorry, it might have allowed few minutes for Q and A, but it also helps. Okay, so remote lab is something which can be done. Irrespective of the limitation, irrespective of your challenges. Get on board all the team members which might be or to be included, it becomes a dream as we have already alluded to. And believe me or not, it's going to have a wonderful student experience which will help enhance the standing of the university or any institution or any company if you are using employers as well. The use of simulation tools will also help before fabrication, before manufacture, and students do that pre and post lab sessions. Thank you very much for your attention. Awesome. Thank you so much. And just to say, if you don't need to do a remote lab, you can do something else in law, you can do something else in health, you can do something online, you can do something for your scenario, you can do something in helping your academics in designing and supporting. And of course, Rich, you can use it to help me get more stuff from IT. So we, thank you so much. Because if you didn't come, we'd have to talk to ourselves. So it's amazing that you came. I'm going to ask one more favor because of course we have to show why we were paid to come here. So we need to take a picture at least here. So it looks like we had lots of people. Yes. Alfred, can you come and take a picture quickly? Yes, please, yeah. And then any questions from anybody? Did anybody have any questions? There's lots there available somewhere. Oh, yes. Yeah, I'm going to put them on that padlet. Did you get to the padlet? Yeah, I'll put it to the padlet. And you can download it from there. Okay. Yes. What's your big dream for what to do next? Oh, gosh. That's a really good question. So we got this massive digital lab big project that the most university I think I've gotten. We've got one and we're going to have VR. So you mentioned VR. So we have a whole VR section. We're going to be using that for, we have some funding from Royal Academy for diversity in engineering. So we're going to look on how to include people who normally can't do stuff and how to get people with different abilities, different interdisciplinary cases and how to get them engrossed in engineering. So we're going to be using VR, AR, augmented reality and so on to do that. Oh, sorry. What was your budget to set us up at home? Oh, good question. So the first remote lab we got quickly, we got 15,000 pounds. And it took us three years to build it because 15,000 pounds wasn't anything. So we had to beg, borrow and people from the labs and so on and we used student projects. So after three years, we were able to do it. For the undergrad lab, we got 20,000 first go to buy the kits because they were off the shelf and then we got another 20,000, 40,000 got us 40 of those kits. What is also important is the fact that it is used in multi-programs as well. So if you use it in first year, try to find other users who might find it useful as well. So in terms of budget-wise, it becomes something which might be quite realistic and quite easy to convince the budget orders. Yes. You can say more people use it. That's what we did and we are doing that now. Thank you so very much. I can see time is up. Thank you so very much. Happy to have the things to take when you go and Rich, can you take a picture with the remote lab and I'll send that to online somehow? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you so very much.