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Evaluation Tools for a Microelectronics Remote Laboratory

Remote laboratories have become increasingly popular in engineering education, gradually replacing traditional hands-on labs. However, in the specialized field of microelectronics fabrication the move towards remote labs has been slow. This is due to the nature of the fabrication facilities, the cost and the extra challenges involved in such transformation. There has been wide debate regarding the effectiveness of remote labs in general and whether they can truly replace traditional hands-on laboratories. At the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, we are testing the effectiveness of a newly-designed and built remote laboratory in Microelectronics. In this paper we present the research tools used to determine the effectiveness of such e-learning tool and compare learning outcomes of students using the remote version of the lab and of those using the traditional laboratory. We discuss the learning objectives of the laboratory and the manner in which they have been derived from the students’ written reports. The outcomes of this trial could influence the implementation of more remote laboratories in this field. Some of the results of the first student trial are reported. Introduction The hands-on practical laboratory has always been a major component of many undergraduate engineering courses. It has always been the main, and sometimes only, source of hands-on experience for the undergraduate students. With the globalization of education, more course material is being made available online. In the past, this material consisted of lecture notes, tutorial solutions etc. However, in the last decade remote laboratories have been added to the teaching tools available for students online. With this new addition there has been a wide debate concerning whether the traditional hands-on laboratories can actually be replaced with the remote alternative. The effectiveness of these remote laboratories in reaching the desired objectives of the traditional laboratory has always been the subject of a vigorous debate amongst engineering educators. In an attempt to settle this ongoing debate, researchers, in the past, have performed evaluations on these remote laboratories. These evaluations have included the measurement of student’s perceived learning and the measurement of learning outcomes displayed in assessment tasks. This paper presents the tools that have been used for evaluation of the effectiveness of a remote laboratory in the field of microelectronics fabrication. The Remote Laboratory The remote laboratory that this paper evaluates is the Micro-Electronics Fabrication Laboratory, MEFLab. MEFLab was developed as part of a research project, at the University of South Australia (UniSA), that evaluates both the technical feasibility and teaching effectiveness of the remote laboratory in the specialised field of microelectronics fabrication. MEFLab allows users to remotely test electronic devices on a wafer such as the one shown in Figure 1. As illustrated in Figure 2, the laboratory allows users to probe different test points by manipulating micro-probes [1, 2]. The characteristic curves of the device under test can be displayed using a curve tracer which provides users with complete control over its parameters. Users can also control the bright and dark field lighting which highlights different features of the wafer. The user interface allows logged-on users to coordinate activities, thus emulating team work usually present in the traditional – proximal laboratory. Figure 1 A typical circuit on a wafer used in MEFLab Figure 2 MEFLab’s graphical user interface As mentioned earlier, there is an ongoing debate between researchers regarding the true effectiveness of remote laboratories in engineering education. Many argue that remote laboratories cannot replace the traditional ones when it comes to achieving the learning outcomes desired from the laboratory experience. However, recently there has been an insurgence in research activities [3, 4] that attempted to provide evidence that remote laboratories can in fact enhance the student’s learning experience. The research project presented here follows this track in an attempt to evaluate the learning outcomes acquired by students. These learning outcomes are derived from behaviours that students display in their reports, which they write during and after conducting experiments in the remote and physical (proximal) laboratories. The following sections detail the research design and tools that were used to evaluate the effectiveness of MEFLab.