Dr. Jim Henry, Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering of University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, gave a presentation on “8 Years Experiences with Web Laboratories.”  During these 8 years he has developed 4 "generations" of lab design & structure.  ! ;These Labs have had over 50,000 uses during these 8 years.  UTC’s Web Laboratories are the oldest labs on the web in the world.  They are available 24/7, are free to use, and experiments are handled on a first in, first out basis.

These are REAL labs with REAL Equipment, and REAL experiments are run for engineering education offered via the web.  Safety is maintained by having watchdog timers and other controllers installed to prevent disasters.  Dr. Henry can logon remotely to correct matters if necessary. All records of labs that have been run are stored on a Lab computer; Dr. Henry accesses these remotely as well.

One good reason to have web-based labs is the opportunity for collaboration - to share facilities - with numerous other educational institutions worldwide.  This is extremely valuable to all involved.  On average, UTC labs are used about 20 hours per semester per student, only about 10% of capacity.  There are many advantages: these web labs provide a way to distribute their use over time and space, to share these labs with other educational facilities that may not be able to afford their own, and to allow easier lab equipment access for disabled students.  A benefit to students is that transients are more observable, as opposed to simply steady state analyses.  T! here are many learning opportunities for the future with these Web Laboratories.

Other schools already taking advantage of this opportunity include in the US: University of Florida, University of Texas and Texas A&M; in other countries: Canada (Quebec), Norway and Switzerland.  Australia's Tech University is also interested, for helping Anatomy students to learn more about feedback and control systems.

Now Dr. Henry has developed a way to connect from the Lecture room to show students experiments, with the classroom equipment in the new engineering building.

Please see http://chem.engr.utc.edu/labs and the web site for Creative Engineering Laboratory Systems, http://www.RealLabs.net for more information on the equipment, data acquisition, and experiments available.

Thanks to Cathy Burnett for her contribution on the presentation summary.

Respectfully submitted by Tiffany Gibby