NANSLO Environmental Scan Definition and Preliminary Findings 1

What is an Environmental Scan? Environmental scanning is the internal communication of external information about issues that may potentially influence an organization's decision-making process. Environmental scanning focuses on the identification of emerging issues, situations, and potential pitfalls that may affect an organization's future. The information gathered, including the events, trends, and relationships that are external to an organization, is provided to key managers within the organization and is used to guide management in future plans. It is used to evaluate an organization's strengths and weaknesses in response to external threats and opportunities. In essence, environmental scanning is a method for identifying, collecting, and translating information about external influences into useful plans and decisions. (Kendra S. Albright, "Environmental Scanning: Radar for Success", Information Management Journal 38 (3), May/June 2004: p. 38) 2

Here’s a Blog where I got the previous quote. It describes what an environmental scan is.

4 1) We want to identify other remote science education labs in the US and Canada that could potentially be future partners and members of NANSLO. So what do WE mean by an ‘Environmental Scan’?  It may be possible to expand NANSLO by simply partnering with others already doing similar work.  It may be possible to approach others doing similar work about adopting our approach and open courses as part of their initiative

5 2) We could, potentially, broaden the range of scientific discipline being taught using online remote science labs.  Others may be doing similar work but in a different science discipline. Eventually it would be great to have a NANSLO network that covers as many areas of science as possible. NOTE – We may not be capturing this yet, but it would be very interesting to see how others doing similar work are using science labs online in an academic context. (For instance, are the online labs for 1 st year, 2nd year, or more advanced or all of these? Are they structured into some kind of academic program similar to what WASc?) So what do WE mean by an ‘Environmental Scan’?

6 3) We would like to compare and contrast the hardware and software being used by others to that used by NANSLO  Others doing similar work may have already learned the lessons we're currently learning and may have identified and be using better hardware and software solutions. So what do WE mean by an ‘Environmental Scan’?  What is the cost effectiveness of their approach?  How Scalable is their approach?

7 4) Assess policies and procedures used by others? So what do WE mean by an ‘Environmental Scan’?  We're interested in the policies and procedures that are affecting how others are implementing science labs online. For instance: o have they formed a consortia? o how are they funding it? o how are they sustaining and maintaining it? o who gets to do what with it? o how is it resourced? o What are their future plans? o etc.  This will include a look at the transfer and articulation issue.

8  What equipment other projects are using So what do WE mean by an ‘Environmental Scan’? 5) We would also like to capture:  What scheduling solutions other projects have adopted.

9 In an effort to capture this information we are evolving a record template that currently contains the following fields: - Name - Location(s) - URLs - Contacts - Participating institution(s) - Funding Sources - Purpose - Policies - Procedures - Hardware - Software - Scheduling Solutions - Academic level - Academic area - Lab names - Capacity - Search Terms Used - Comments

10 Once we are ready to call this scan complete, we will attempt to make observations about remote and web-based science labs in the US and Canada and also identify trends. The Final Step in our environmental scan:

11 Preliminary Findings:  Projects that are similar to RWSL are rare, but the number is NOT vanishingly small.  Many RWSL-like projects focus on high-end equipment, while RWSL will bring the ubiquitous lab equipment used in lower level courses (first and second year and possibly ABE) to many learners.  There are enough projects using higher end equipment out there, that if we wanted to give our students access to this higher end equipment, possibly we could partner with them providing they are not already at capacity.

12 Some Notable Projects so far: 1) Integrated Laboratory Network (ILN) (excerpts) Location: Washington and BC URL(s): Purpose: The Integrated Laboratory Network (ILN) is an initiative to integrate scientific instrumentation and supporting instructional material into the classroom, laboratory, and research environments through the use of web-based technologies. Funding Source(s): National Science Foundation, BCcampus, Sloan-C Lab Equipment (includes): Gas Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometers, Atomic Absorption Spectrometers, Scanning Electron Microscope, Tunable Diode Laser, and Common Lab Accessories Capacity: not clear so far

13 2) MIT iLabs Global Online Laboratory Consortium (excerpts) Some Notable Projects so far: Location: Massachusetts Purpose: The iLab Project is dedicated to the proposition that online laboratories - real laboratories accessed through the Internet - can enrich science and engineering education by greatly expanding the range of experiments that the students are exposed to in the course of their education. Unlike conventional laboratories, iLabs can be shared across a university or across the world. The iLabs vision is to share lab experiments as broadly as possible within higher education and beyond. The ultimate goal of the iLabs project is to create a rich set of experiment resources that make it easier for faculty members around the world to share their labs over the Internet. URL(s): Software: LabVIEW Lab Equipment: Dynamic Signal Analyzer, ELVIS, Shake Table, Microelectronics Device Characterization, Heat Exchanger, Force Dipole, Polymer Crystalization, Spectrometer Participating institutions: MIT

Some Notable Projects so far: 14 3) German and Australian Projects  Remote Control Labs (Germany)  LabShare (Australia) Location: Kaiserslautern, Germany URL(s): Lab names (include): Photoelectric Affect, Radioactivity, World Pendulum, Millikan Oil Drop Experiment, Electron Diffraction, Speed of Light, Optical Fourier Transformation URL(s): Comments: Both of these projects are similar to RWSL, but I don’t have a lot of information on them yet. They are also not in the US or Canada.

15 Conclusion We are still solidifying the record template that we want to use with this scan and getting a handle on what environmental scanning means, but we have found a few projects similar to RWSL in concept already. Most of these relate to higher end scientific equipment, where RWSL intends to make the more ubiquitous lab equipment found in first and second year laboratories available to students.