We are looking for partner HEIs and training providers to co-develop and share remote access tools for practical learning. Early examples includes onscreen experiments based on real data in the OpenScience Laboratory, private remote analysis of industry samples in our SEMs. We’ll be pitching more ideas in a workshop at the HE STEM conference 30/31 Jan 2019 in Birmingham (https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/training-events/events/STEM-conference-2019)
"The best universities have a knack for anticipation ... The Open University is now home to laboratories that can be accessed online by its students, allowing them to control research-grade microscopes, robots and telescopes." Speech by Sam Gyimah at the HEPI annual conference, 7/6/18: Delivering value for money in the age of the student
Pleased to have received 'Remote Exeriment Award' from the Global Online Laboratories Consortium at REV 2018 in Düsseldorf
Formal inauguration took place at the Observatorio del Teide on 6 July 2017
Outstanding Digital Innovation of the year THE Leadership & Management award 2017 goes to OpenSTEM Labs (of which the OpenScience Laboratory is a part along with the OpenScience Observatories and the OpenEngineering Lab)
A new wing in our virtual Labs will come on stream in 2017. The first activities in the OpenEngineering lab will feature remote experiments for electronics and control, and robotics; more engineering content will follow.
The OpenSTEM Labs includes the OpenScience Observatories, the OpenEngineering Labs, the OpenScience Laboratory, Citizen Science platforms iSpotnature.org and treezilla.org, and on campus teaching labs.
Visitors to the main OU campus in Milton Keynes will notice that the radio telescope (ARROW) is very busy repointing and tracking across the sky.
This is because we currently have around 200 students using the ARROW remotely, in online groups of four, as part of their study of SXPA288 Practical Science: Physics & Astronomy. They are busy mapping the structure of our Galaxy by ‘listening’ for the 1.4 GHz radio emissions from hydrogen atoms several tens of thousands of light years away.
Each night other SXPA288 students are using our remotely operable optical telescope, the PIRATE Facility in Mallorca, to acquire their own observations of star clusters.
We were joined by a number of colleagues from around the world with expertise in designing and building remote experiments for teaching for a one day workshop. We had representatives from UK, Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Brazil. The workshop was also attended via Skype by colleagues in Australia and the US. Each party operated a remote experiment during the morning session demonstrating a variety of robust approaches to the challenges of remotely controlled apparatus. We also exchanged ideas for scaffolding these remote-lab-tools to enable them to become valuable resources fro learning from and about practical science. We also had a series of focussed discussions on the pedagogical advantages of robotic experiments, how to incorporate opportunities for social learning in a geographically-distributed lab class and how to develop the student skills in techniques for assembling experimental apparatus from modular components.
Read about our recent success as THE 'Outstanding ICT initiative of the year' in the following article by JISC:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/celebrating-outstanding-ict-in-uk-higher-education-28-nov-2014
The OpenScience Lab has been shortlisted for 'Outstanding ICT initiative of the year' at the Times Higher Education awards.