“The School’s Engineering Design 1 course forms part of the backbone of our first year Engineering programmes, and has around 450-500 students enrolled each year.  The remote laboratories (specifically the spinners and pendulums) have allowed us to include practical sessions within the course, which would otherwise be impossible due to the limited amount of traditional laboratory space on the campus, and the existing high demand for this space.  Running multiple two-hour remote lab sessions, has enabled all of our students to engage with real-time experiments, and to learn essential engineering skills relating to instrumentation, measurement and data analysis.”

Dr Jonathan Terry, Senior Lecturer and Head of Graduate School, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh

“Having remote access to the vector network analyser labs gives our students the chance to engage with coursework flexibly and on their mobile devices – at any time of the day!  Students can easily re-book a lab to repeat measurements if necessary, and further develop their understanding of RF/microwave engineering.  They can complete 1-port and 2-port experiments by applying transmission line theory and investigating the S-parameters from RF/microwave couplers and filters, for example.  We design and build all the self-calibrating hardware and supporting software in-house, so it has truly been an rewarding experience to work with Prof. Drysdale and his world-class team!”

Dr Symon Podilchak, Senior Lecturer in Radio Frequency Technology, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh

“We use the truss remote laboratory for the 2nd year structural mechanics course of around 250 students, alongside conventional in-person laboratory sessions. The combination is really effective. The in person sessions are important and give a hands-on experience, but we find that since the students interact with the remote laboratory individually, and without demonstrator support, it gets them asking some really good questions about measurement precision and relationships between models and physical reality.”

Dr Thomas Reynolds, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Infrastructure and Environment, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh

“We use the spinner and pendulum remote labs to deliver skills workshops in our large, first-year, general engineering course. Students learn how to analyse data with Jupyter notebooks using large datasets collected and exported from the remote labs.”

Dr Gary Wells, Reader, Institute for Multiscale Thermofluids, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh

“Practable remote laboratories are a key component of our online information events, enabling staff to demonstrate the actual equipment that applicants will be using in their future engineering degrees.”

Ala Ross, Student Recruitment Officer, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh