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

Baxter robots Part of OpenSTEM Lab HEFCE and OU joint funded

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

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

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

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 + 10-30 s TM129 17J? Labcast 20-200 10-30 s local TM129 16J

Labcast recordings TM129-16J http://live.kmi.open.ac.uk/webcast/a19d2x135 TM129-17B http://live.kmi.open.ac.uk/webcast/3c9c6C148

How many watched?

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Will you join live next time?

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

Attitudes?

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

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!

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!

Thanks! Demonstrations at 2:30pm in Venables Jon.Rosewell@open.ac.uk