A Novel Wiki-Based Remote Laboratory Platform for Engineering Education

With the unprecedented growth of e-learning, more and more new IT technologies are used to develop e-learning tools. As one of the most common forms of social computing, Wiki technology has been used to develop the collaborative and cooperative learning platform to support multiple users learning online effectively. In this paper, we propose a new software architecture to create a novel wiki-based remote laboratory platform by combining the advantages of both Wiki technology and remote laboratory technology. This platform is implemented based on a unified framework for remote laboratory development and an open source wiki software package, MediaWiki. To illustrate the effectiveness of this platform, two remote experiments, Smart Vibration Platform (SVP) and Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) motor speed control, are integrated into this platform. This new wiki-based remote laboratory has been used for teaching Mechanical Engineering courses and creating students’ assignments at the University of Houston.