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1. e-Learning Innovative Engineering
Solutions
e-LIVES National Dissemination Workshop
e‐Engineering
Good Practice Guide

2. e-LIVES National Dissemination Workshop
e-Engineering
Promoting the development of e-engineering training practices
By “e-engineering” it is meant “e-learning training in the field of
hard sciences”
e-Engineering is a concept that results from the concatenation of
two ideas:
• E-learning. Concepts such as learning strategies, learning
platforms and scenarios, organization, legal aspect and quality
assessments are key factors to be considered in the design of e-
courses
• Remote laboratory. A set of hardware instrumentation and
software solutions that allows students to carry out online
experiments through Internet

3. e-LIVES National Dissemination Workshop
e-Engineering

4. e-LIVES National Dissemination Workshop
e-Engineering Good Practice
Guide
• E-learning strategy applied to e-Engineering
• Legal aspects
• Financial model
• Organization of an e-learning training
• Designing practical laboratory classes
• Training of personnel
• Quality assessment of an e-learning training
• E-learning platforms
• Handling different aspects related to Remote Laboratories to be
used in e-Engineering
• Remote laboratory development from a technical perspective

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Educational Platforms
Educational platforms receive several names. These names are all
used to talk about teaching-learning online systems:
• Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)
• Learning Management System (LMS)
• Managed Learning Environment (MLE)
• Integrated Learning System (ILS)
• Learning Support System (LSS)
• Virtual/Distance Training Platforms
• Virtual Campus
An educational platform aspires to create and handle teaching and
learning online sites, where teachers and students may interact
during the learning process

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The basic properties educational platforms include are:
• Flexibility
• Interactivity
• Standardization
• Scalability
• Functionality
• Usability
• Ubiquity
• Integration
Educational Platforms:
Properties

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Remote laboratories?
Salmerón-Manzano, E., & Manzano-Agugliaro, F. (2018). The higher education sustainability through virtual
laboratories: The Spanish University as case of study. Sustainability, 10(11), 4040.

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Three key aspects of a remote laboratory: Pedagogical content,
software, hardware
Multidisciplinar teams required
Remote laboratories: Key
elements

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Components of a web-
based Remote laboratory

10. e-LIVES National Dissemination Workshop
Remote laboratories design
Before the development stage, some best practices would be:
• Know and define who is the intended audience of the laboratory
• Know and define what concepts should teach and include
• Know and define how users will interact with the laboratory
• Know and define what actions they will be able to conduct
Aspects related to remote labs that should be considered:
• Issues related to human activities
• Aspects related to Technology
• Pedagogical and Educational support
• Lifecycle and obsolescence of lab equipment
• Learning platforms and federation

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Remote laboratories design:
good practices
• Use an architecture which minimizes the hardware/software
coupling
• System reliable
• System easily maintained
• Remote administration capabilities
• Auto-diagnostic hardware
• Avoid over-engineering
• Keep costs down unless there are good reasons not to
• Plan for replication

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LifeCycle and obsolescency
of Remote laboratories
A remote lab is firstly based in the pedagogical needs what influences
in its design and the first step to take is analysing didactic
requirements
Once the lab is demonstrated to be a good resource, the maintenance
and mostly, the upgrading of the equipment to updated technologies as
time passes by, have to be seen as a good practice
A good practice could be the establishment of a remote lab review
scheduling

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e-Learning training:
Organization
• Course structure: Course structure clearly reflects the quality of
the course. Course structure should contain the detailed
information about the various modules involved in that course
• Student support: Student support is one of the primary areas of
e-learning that is completely different from the traditional
classroom teaching method. In e-learning, students learn as an
interaction with programmed instructional systems
• Faculty support: Promotion is the only way to get the e-learning
out of your university to the student’s workspace. In that sense, it
is important for faculty to provide enough support
• Evaluation & assessment: Evaluation and assessment is the
essential part of learning and teaching. Assessment is furtherly
divided into two categories, namely, the summative and the
formative assessment

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e-Learning training:
follow-up
e-Learning has emerged as one of the popular tools for the current education
system. This tool has been integrated into numerous educational programs
in different universities throughout the world
Pedagogical support for students refers to the procedures and approaches
followed by the university to address pedagogical issues and achieve a high
level of pedagogical quality for e-learning courses. In essence, along with the
teaching responsibilities, teachers need to consider and focus on numerous
aspects to provide a good and satisfying support to students
• Self-efficacy beliefs and skills of teachers
• Ease of use of training infrastructure
• Quality of course and supporting material
• Learning objectives
• Student’s homework follow-up and feedback
• Technical support

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e-learning, e-Engineering
strategies and practical work
Depending on the institution different
learning practices can be implemented
Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT)
Lecturing
Virtual and Remote Labs
Lecturing

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Practical laboratory
classes: Design
The design of a practical work session cannot be dissociated from
the design of an entire course. Traditionally, the practical work
session is the third link in the chain: Courses – Tutorials – Practical
work. However, this three-phase organization is not necessarily the
most effective:
• The role of the laboratory experiment is limited to the practical
verification of the validity of a theory
• The results of the experiment are often known and theoretically
predicted
• The discovery aspect, formulation of hypotheses to explain the
observation is often missed
• The student is not trained to think like a scientist

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Practical laboratory classes:
Instructional design
There are several frameworks for the design of a course
Dick and Carey model:

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Practical laboratory classes:
Instructional strategy
Inquiry learning as an alternative strategy
“Learning is a process whereby knowledge is created through the
transformation of experience” (Kolb, 2014)

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Legal aspects
The geographic diversity of
the countries covered inside
the partnership under study,
from Europe, North Africa,
and the Middle East (EMEA)
and their diverse legislation
and how they may influence
the development of e-
Engineering courses makes
this a challenging topic

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European countries
The creation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) began
with the Bologna process, launched with the Bologna Declaration
(1999), aims to introduce a more comparable, compatible and
consistent system for European higher education, through:
• Introduction of the Three-Cycle System (degree, master and
doctorate)
• Strengthening quality assurance
• To facilitate the recognition of qualifications and study periods
In addition to European laws, each European country also has its
own legal framework

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Middle East and African
countries
Unlike European countries, the Middle East and African countries are
governed by other own laws. But both have several common main
goals, such as:
• Integration of ICT in education systems and initial and continuing
training of teachers and trainers
• Support the development of high-quality digital teaching material
that ensures the quality of online offers
• Obtaining national accreditation of education programs
(Strengthening quality assurance)

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Financial model
Whatever the country, a higher education professor has generally an,
generally quantified in number of hours to spend with students
In e-learning contexts, annual workload of teaching to do is complex to
handle. In higher education systems there is an absence of a clear legal
framework
Compensation models:
• No compensation arrangement for teachers
• The ECTS-based model
• A priori and a posteriori estimation of teacher workload model
• The online meeting hours model
An intermediate model which presents the best guarantee for the different
stakeholders and also considering the number N of active students during
the assessment

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Training personnel: Train the
Trainers
The IFeL Competency Framework responds to the need of training for
university teachers to integrate ICT into their teaching and research
activities
It can be used either to develop training modules that will be put
online or to design appropriate training content
It is based on the areas related to the integration of ICT with
university teaching and specifically on the pedagogical core of the
DigCompEdu reference framework. These areas are:
• Documentation
• Production
• Communication
• Evaluation

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DigCompEdu framework

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IFeL competences

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Quality, Assessment &
Evaluation
Another way to assess the quality of an e-learning training is to
obtain data about the quality
• who or what can provide data?
• how should it be collected?
¿Questionnaires ---- Peer review ---- Big Data?
e-Learning assessment methods:
• Quantitative assessments provide concrete numbers
• Qualitative assessments are best for specific skills and tasks

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Student learning results
One way to measure the quality of an e-learning training is by
assessing the goal audience of the e-learning program themselves
The aim of a training is to increase the students’ knowledge
Different assessment techniques can be used at different moments:
• during the training (formative)
• after the training (summative)
Not all traditional assessment methods can be used

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Tools used to evaluate
quality
Questionnaires and feedback are the most common ways to evaluate
quality in e-learning environments. Tools available to achieve such a
goal are divided into two categories
1.- LMS plugins. The information gathered is used to create reports:
• Report module: basic reporting tool
• Dashboard: charts and tables
• Custom SQL queries report
2.- Independent Survey tools. Most reporting software are paid
ones, some free software tools are:
• The BIRT-Business Intelligence and Reporting Tool
• Google forms
• Jaspersoft

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The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement
of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
e-LIVES
e-Learning InnoVative
Engineering Solutions
e‐Engineering
Good Practice Guide