A New Method for Building Web-based Virtual Laboratory

The aim of the Web-based virtual laboratory is to provide students access via the Internet to various experiments in science and engineering education. Students are usually located at geographically distributed location (e.g., at home) and have remote access to our experiments. Virtual laboratory is based on a distance education concept due to the fact that certain students may be interested in studying even at places which are far away from campus eliminating the necessity to be there in person. In the web-based virtual lab they are able to gain some practice in theory, do pre-experiments and review contents of experiment. An approach based on a browse/server architecture written in Java, VRML and MATLAB is proposed. This paper discusses some relevant technologies of virtual experimentation and presents the technical structure and some results of the project.