1. Remote practical-focused tutorials
Jon Rosewell
Computing and Communications, STEM Faculty
Abstract
As befits its title, Technologies in practice (TM129) takes a practical focus to learning, with up to 50% of study time having a practical aspect. The tutorial program should support this and in the past some tutors have found innovative ways of bringing practical demonstrations or exercises into their face-to-face sessions, for example demonstrating a robot vacuum cleaner or setting up an ad-hoc network of students’ laptops.
Producing online tutorials with an equivalent practical focus is a challenge. The creation of the OpenSTEM lab provides an opportunity to meet this challenge. Part of the HEFCE and OU funding for the OpenSTEM lab has provided five large ‘Baxter’ robots which will be accessible remotely as well as two which will be used at residential school. The lab also provides racked equipment bays for smaller remote access experiments, such as those being developed for the electronics curriculum. For a large population module such as TM129, this infrastructure provides an opportunity to roll-out practical-focused synchronous tutorial events to all students, provided the activities are well designed and scripted so that they can be delivered by a number of tutors.
In this presentation I will review the possible use-cases for remote practical activities, discuss some of the technological and pedagogical challenges, and review progress towards delivering engaging practical activities at a distance.
Summary
Find out how the OpenSTEM lab can be used to support remote access to tutor-led practical work in robotics and other technologies.
Jon Rosewell Computing & Communications, STEM eSTEeM Conference, 25 April 2017

2. Baxter robots
Part of OpenSTEM Lab
HEFCE and OU joint funded

3. TM129 Technologies in practice
30-pt, first level
Three blocks
Robotics
Networking
Linux
Large cohorts
October: ~1600
February: ~600

4. Practical activity at a distance
Home experiment kit
Student’s own kit
Simulation
Virtual reality
Remote recorded experiment
Remote live experiment
Demonstration
Recorded video

5. Video on the web – stream?
Viewers
Lag
1 / many
0 / long
~ 3 s 1
<0.1s
1-5
~ 0.5 s
5 + 50
500
30 s
Thousands

6. Use cases for remote robot
Number
Access
Video lag
Control
Module
Student control 1
book
<1 s
bespoke
T312 19J
Project student program
std tools
TM45* 18J?
Group program
3-5
~ 1 s
bespoke / std tools
Observe autonomous
1-200
drop-in
15-30 s
none / bespoke
TM129 17J
Tutor-led demo
1 + 20
LEM
<1 s s
TM129 17J?
Labcast
20-200
10-30 s
local
TM129 16J

7. Labcast recordings
TM129-16J TM129-17B

8. How many watched?

9. How many watched?

10. Did you watch the event?

11. Why not?

12. Will you join live next time?

13. Preferences?
live short (15min) daytime weekend active author text chat
recorded long (1hr) evening weekday listen tutor microphone

14. Attitudes?

15. Attitudes? I was able to use the interface
I was able to hear and see OK
I found the chat window useful
I thought session was the right length
I found the session useful
I enjoyed this session
I would recommend to other students

16. Chat comments Really enjoyed it Useful session
thanks for the demo, it's an awesome bit of kit!!
Thanks for having us, this was very interesting
Tutor: I was at your TM129 Baxter demo last night and just wanted to say how brilliant I thought it was. The students were really engaged with it and found it inspirational!

17. Questionnaire comments
Seeing a live demonstration of a robot and having someone knowledgeable in the area, that could answer questions near the end was very helpful. I like the idea of the widgets and being able to interactively answer questions that the answers got explained further by the person presenting. Seeing the practical, real world use of robotics really helped me grasp the wider purpose of what I was learning. I found that giving the course material a more tangible context helped me to engage with it more strongly. Having now watched the recording … I wish there had been some publicity…. I did receive the invite …, but I had the impression it was another generic video … that wasn't that relevant to the studies. Having now seen it, this was great!

18. Thanks!
Demonstrations at 2:30pm in Venables