Development of Virtual Classes and Laboratories with Remote Access

Abstract

When comparing a few decades ago to now, the educational system has undergone various technological revolutions, particularly with the usage of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), which have changed the process of teaching and learning. VLEs with internet services play a major role in the storage of information and its dissemination. With the use of VLEs, there emerges the challenge of bringing practical classes online, engaging the students in practical sessions as it is in traditional laboratories. Though, there have been various simulators but they are not geared towards educational sessions but practically for industrial use and are not curriculum-based, this has been a major concern in engaging the students practically at a distance level according to the instructor’s plan. Hence, in this work, a robust VLE has been designed and implemented. The system has an evaluated model that was developed with MySQL and PHP, which served as the database and server-side programming, respectively. The proposed VLE offers an interactive web-enabled approach for online learning and practice, practical recordings are uploaded, and practical simulations are handled. Qualitative assessments were carried out on the gathered data from the 100 respondents through the use of the questionnaire. Performance metrics such as response time, latency, availability, reliability and scalability were used to conduct a comparative analysis between the existing VLEs and the developed VLE. The findings of the study showed that the utilisation of the proposed VLE has the potential to cause a positive transformation and a paradigm shift in educational institutions.