Remote Engineering Asynchronous Laboratories

REAL ChEMICALUTC-UTx-PVA&M-UFlaNarrative-1

REAL ChEMICAL

Remote Engineering Asynchronous Laboratories

Chemical Engineering Multi-Institutional Collaborative-Access Laboratories

5A.RESULTS FROM PRIOR NSF SUPPORT

UTChattanooga.NSF-ILI Grant 97-51024 supported work at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTChattanooga) to expand and improve the hardware for data acquisition and control and Web-access of several engineering laboratory stations. Outreach activities have included papers presented at national and international meetings of ASEE, AIChE, Chemical Engineering Summer School and seminars in the US and abroad. The results met all the goals of the ILI grant.

University of Texas. Dr. Edgar is currently working as a contractor on an NSF project with the University of New Mexico, to develop a multi-media CD-ROM for training engineers about semi-conductor manufacturing

Prairie View A&M University.Dr. Osborne-Lee has no prior NSF support.

University of Florida.Dr. Crisalle is currently the PI on NSF grant entitled “U.S.-Europe Cooperative Research: Distance learning through activities in process control” (number INT-9802694). This is a travel-funds grant that has facilitated the collaboration of the PI with European colleagues in the area of remote real-time experimentation over the Internet. This has resulted in one journal paper and 8 conference presentations (all the references listed with the name of the PI as a co-author).

5B.PROJECT DESCRIPTION

B.1. REAL ChEMICAL — Project Overview

The Remote Engineering Asynchronous Laboratories (REAL) Chemical Engineering Multi-Institutional Collaborative-Access Laboratories (ChEMICAL) Program is designed to improve the breadth of student learning in chemical engineering laboratories and to lower the cost per student of installing and renovating chemical engineering laboratory equipment. The program will do this by using and extending existing technology and educational best practices for education.

The REAL ChEMICAL Program will produce and evaluate significant new pedagogical practices and educational materials for chemical engineering laboratories, and will promote dissemination and effective implementation of the products. The outcomes of the project will include:

• The full development of innovative instructional laboratory materials that incorporate demonstrated effective educational methodology, and that are based upon experiences with remotely accessed laboratory equipment;
• An assessment of the effectiveness of the laboratory materials and usage procedures at diverse institutions serving students with diverse backgrounds;
• Faculty at the collaborating test sites using the materials and procedures;
• Dissemination of information about the developed materials and procedures; and
• Self-sustaining national distribution through the CACHE Corporation.

The following narrative describes the plans to achieve these outcomes.

The REAL ChEMICAL Program is a collaborative, multi-institutional effort. The participating universities represent diversity in missions and sizes. The students at these universities represent diversity in make-up. The student populations include women, African-Americans, Hispanics (about 25% of the ChE students at UTx, for example) and Asian-Americans, as well as part-time and returning adult students.

The REAL ChEMICAL Program described here offers real-world experimental capabilities to students and faculty through the Internet. A growing number and variety of experiments (with real equipment) are becoming available for remote operation via the Web. With this, a significant opportunity exists for improving the quality of laboratory education in chemical engineering across the nation.

Chemical engineering education has evolved with the use of computers in the past four decades providing vast new opportunities for learning both inside and outside of the traditional classroom setting. The use of the computer for making complex computations and graphical presentations has been well documented and utilized throughout chemical engineering education. Now, the adaptive use of computers connected to the Internet can deliver similar advantages in chemical engineering laboratories through Web-based tools.

With the use of remotely operated experiments, a department can have access to laboratory education opportunities without necessarily having the full level expense. Laboratory buildings cost $1,000/sq.ft. to build; new and replacement equipment is expensive; technician help is expensive. In the REAL ChEMICAL Program, we are demonstrating an alternative to ownership of all experimental equipment. In this program, each of the four departments will add one new experiment for its chemical engineering unit operations laboratory. That experiment will be used locally by the students in that department and remotely by the students in the other three departments.

What this means is that by using REAL ChEMICAL, all four departments will gain four experiments for their laboratory education menu. Without remote access, the same additional educational opportunity would cost four times as much. The potential exists for extending this to 10 or more departments; that will require the development of appropriate educational materials and scheduling practices. Developing these materials and practices is included in this REAL ChEMICAL Program. The REAL ChEMICAL Program will also develop instructional aids that will enable the instructors to use Web-based experimental laboratory results in the lecture class setting and/or for out-of-class assignment work. The program will also provide assistance to faculty at other institutions who wish to implement Web-connected laboratory chemical engineering experiments.

If the REAL ChEMICAL Program proves successful, the methods can be used to expand institutions' laboratory diversity while also demonstrating the advantages of operating modern laboratories that utilize computers for data acquisition, analysis, presentation, and control.

The PIs have shown a commitment to chemical engineering education through their support of developing modern laboratories in their various schools. The PIs on this project collectively have over 70 years of combined service in chemical engineering education.

B.2.REAL ChEMICAL — Goals and Objectives

The objectives of this project are as follows:

1. To increase the number and variety of chemical engineering laboratory experiments that can be operated remotely via the Web
2. To develop the educational materials for students to improve learning with laboratory experiments via the Web
3. To assess the differential learning effectiveness of laboratory experiences with "hands-on" and remotely operated equipment
4. To produce quality materials that assist faculty who want to conduct Web-connected experiments during their conventional lectures, for assignments of out-of-class work or to supplement conventional laboratory offerings
5. To conduct faculty workshops to illustrate the use of remotely operated equipment for chemical engineering unit operations laboratories

The goals are to use the capabilities of the Web to (1) aid in effective chemical engineering laboratory education and (2) reduce the cost of laboratory education in chemical engineering.

B.3.REAL ChEMICAL — Project Description

B.3-1.INTRODUCTION

The following issues are considered as important needs in chemical engineering education today:

• Laboratory equipment is needed in new and expanding chemical engineering programs
• Outdated laboratory equipment in mature chemical engineering programs needs to be replaced
• There is a need to have high quality learning materials for remotely operated laboratories
• Accommodations are needed for physically disabled students and students with special needs
• To provide educational materials are needed to accommodate instructors using classroom demonstrations of remote equipment
• There is a need for laboratory equipment to be accessible to departments and students at schools that do not have these facilities
• The need to provide useful feedback to students in their experimentation with Web-connected laboratories
• The need to accommodate students with schedule demands that do not mesh with normal laboratory session timing
• The need to accommodate students who require more time to complete laboratory exercises

This proposal expands on the experiences of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTChattanooga), where a successful proof of concept has been fully developed and tested since the program inception in 1995.

Having already completed the "proof-of-concept" phase on the REAL Program, which has been ongoing at the UTChattanooga, this collaborative program will attain the following accomplishments:

(1)expand the Web-access of interactive laboratory experiments

(2)develop and disseminate effective teaching materials to accompany laboratory experiments offered via the Web

(3)measure learning by and satisfaction of students

(4)disseminate materials and methods by conducting faculty workshops on the effective use of remotely operated experiments for chemical engineering education

(5)publish articles in chemical engineering journals

This program will advance this educational technology to the next stage.

Targeted Emphasis -- Integration of Technology in Education

The central theme of the REAL ChEMICAL Program is the integration of information technology in chemical engineering education. Information technology includes PC data acquisition and control, Web interactivity with laboratory equipment and multimedia instructional methods. The educational materials will include innovative educational strategies, particularly, where possible, those successfully demonstrated in the NSF Coalition programs. Models to improve distance learning, particularly those at Stanford [Olsen, 1994] and Vanderbilt Universities [Bourne, 1996], will be adapted where applicable.

The Web system planned in the REAL ChEMICAL Program will link information and knowledge with monitoring of performance and feedback for each experiment via the Web. The aim is to provide meaningful learning experiences to the student.

B.3-2BACKGROUND

Laboratory work has always played an important part in chemical engineering education. Most commonly, laboratory work is confined to small fractions of the school-week. A major effort in the school-week is devoted to non-laboratory learning, with theory, modeling or simulation being used. Chemical engineering educators generally use real experimental data for analysis only in traditional laboratory work. This limits the instructor in conventional lecture courses to presenting "well-used" problems included within the text for student learning.

Web-access of laboratory experiments means that real chemical engineering laboratory equipment, controlled and monitored interactively by computers that are connected to the Internet, can be used to perform experiments under the command of users on the Web. This capability is now available in the laboratories at UTChattanooga as well as other schools, such as UT-Austin and MIT (Rueda, 2003; Colton, 2001-2003). Faculty and students from any university can run some of the Web-connected experiments at any time of the day or night, any day of the week. The laboratory station's computer operates the equipment (pumps, valves, heaters, relays, etc.), collects the data (pressure, temperature, concentration, etc.) and sends it to the Web user. The UTChattanooga site is accessed through the Web address of ; links to the collaborating sites will be added there.

The Web user interfaces that are now in use for the existing unit operations stations at UTC are all similar to the one shown (Figure 1). This sample is for the distillation unit. The Web page is divided into an area near the top where students can link to tutorials, pictures, live video and past data files. Below that (shown in Figure 1) are the “control” and “results” areas where graphical inputs and outputs are available.

Figure 1. Web page illustrating the student user interface with remote equipment. /

Graphs of the time-progress of all the process variables are separately available on the Web (Figure 2). Both of these Web pages can be viewed simultaneously by other students or instructors in real time. The Web page in Figure 2 (time graphs of process variables) and all the raw data are archived for subsequent viewing and analysis.

/ Figure 2. Web page image showing the time-progress of the process variables in the distillation experiment. (This is only a selection of the results page. This example is for a change in reflux ration at t=250 minutes.)

All established chemical engineering programs are facing increased financial pressure to keep existing laboratory experiments up-to-date and in satisfactory operating condition. Major operating costs of unit operations laboratories include maintenance and teaching assistant support. Using highly automated experiments such as those proposed here for remote operations will allow a drastic reduction in TA time requirements for those particular experiments. In addition, by sharing the operation of the experiments among several universities, there can be a pro rata reduction in maintenance costs. There is also the opportunity to add experimental assignments to a lecture class using this technology. In a lecture class, it may be desirable to have students individually or in small groups carry out an experiment, much like a homework assignment; in contrast, a traditional experiment would require continuous supervision by teaching assistants (e.g., one week of TA time for an entire class). Therefore using an internet-based experiment can greatly reduce the time commitment by the TA.

One focus of the work in this project is to expand the number of systems that are available to chemical engineering education for remote operation. This work includes hardware and software developments in the laboratories of the four collaborating schools.

Another focus of this project is the development of the instructional tools necessary to integrate Web experimental data into chemical engineering academic courses. This project will document the best practices of using Web experimental data for analysis and will develop reliable and user-friendly interface tools. The project will assess the differential learning by students for the use of remotely operated experiments and locally operated experiments.

With the development of Web-based laboratory systems, instructors now have the opportunity to bring "up-and-running" laboratory experiences and appropriate experimental data into the traditional lecture setting and/or assign such Web-based work for homework assignments.

B.3-2.1Literature on Remote Laboratory Operation

The proof-of-concept for Web-access laboratory experimentation has been successfully verified at UTChattanooga and other places, principally in the area of controls engineering. Since mid-1995, one of the engineering controls stations at UTChattanooga has been accessible on-line. At the time of this writing, ten laboratory stations are on-line for experimentation in chemical engineering and controls. In addition to operating this equipment, Web users are able to listen to the sounds of the equipment (motors and valve operators) while they operate (with live, streaming audio) and two stations (distillation and level control) are also viewable on the Web with live, video streaming. Section B.3-3.2, below, describes extensions to the equipment base that the REAL ChEMICAL Program will implement.

In the past 5 years, about $500,000 has been spent on the development of the laboratories associated with the program at UTChattanooga. These laboratories include the chemical, mechanical and environmental engineering laboratories and the controls laboratory.

One of the PIs (Dr. Henry) has presented papers at a number of meetings to encourage others in Engineering Academia to use the UTChattanooga laboratories via the Web and develop their own laboratories [Henry, 2000-2003, Naghedolfeizi, 2000]. One of the Co-PIs (Dr. Edgar) tested a liquid-level control experiment at U. Texas using remote operation during the Spring, 2003. He found that 70% of his students preferred the remote operation to the traditional approach.

Table 1 lists the laboratory stations that are accessible to the Web-connected user. Each of these is described briefly in the "Supplementary Documents" section. All of these are inherently stable systems and have operated safely for years with unattended operation. "Watch-Dog" timed relays are installed to prevent operation in the event of a computer "freeze" or other equipment or software failure. Over 50,000 experiments have been conducted in the last 8 years on these systems. Users have been from around the world.

Table 1. Existing Web-Accessible Chemical Engineering Laboratory Stations at UTChattanooga

Distillation column
Packed column absorption
Heat exchanger
Batch dryer
Gas-fired heater
Flow through porous media
Controls stations

B.3-2.2Educational Materials for Remote Laboratory Operation

Educational materials for Web-based laboratory experiments include tutorials, assignments and supporting materials needed to assist learning on the part of the students. It also includes the teaching aids for use by instructors. The educational materials developed in this program will include descriptions of the equipment, examples of experiments, procedures for conducting the experiments and sample topics for discussion. The format for the educational materials will include a Web interface, CD-ROM or DVD having interactive programming, extensive photos and diagrams.

The project team will develop and evaluate the materials for implementing extensive use of Web-based laboratory learning experiences. Another aspect of the educational materials will be a portal system that will monitor the use of the Web-based laboratory system. This system will monitor the performance of the users of the system and give suggestions and feedback to the users (students) and give reports to the faculty members.

The development efforts at UTChattanooga, U. Texas-Austin, and other places have also provided a valuable proof-of-concept for the methodology used to deliver educational materials in the context of the Web-access laboratory. In every term since 1996, students at UTChattanooga have completed the laboratory portions of the Process Control course by Web connections. Furthermore, each term in the past three years students have completed the laboratory portions of the chemical engineering unit operations course via Web connections. At this time, a Web-site presents a series of directed assignments for the student to work through and report the results by e-mail with graphical attachments. The assignments are comprised of tutorials and suggestions for parameters that might be used in the experimental design. The report is guided by a set of questions for each assignment. Graphical and tabular results are sent as e-mail attachments. The instruction thus far has been largely by Web and text reading materials and by e-mail between the respective student and the instructor.