At-home lab kits key to remote learning success

In March, 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down classrooms across Canada and beyond, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering went to work in an effort to preserve essential hands-on learning experiences for students.  

Technical staff in the department brought forward the idea to create remote lab kits to enable students to safely conduct experiments at home. The low voltage, low current kits would include the necessary electronic components and hand-held test and measurement devices that could use any computer as both the display and input-output, and would be shipped directly to the students.

“Empowering our students is an important way in which we can help them make a difference,” says Ivan Fair, who has served as ECE Chair since 2015 and was involved in the kits initiative. “Our discipline is at a point where we have the ability to put the tools in the students’ hands. It is in their power to do tremendous things.”

With a strong industrial background and familiarity with hands-on components, professor Steven Knudsen was tasked with coordinating the lab kit effort, explains Fair, adding that Knudsen worked with all the professors to adapt and modify lab procedures as appropriate and assisted with the procurement and kitting processes. Department manager Wendy Barton was also instrumental in handling the many logistical challenges related to ordering parts and shipping kits.

Fair also credits Masoud Ardakani, Associate Chair (Undergraduate), and Ashwin Iyer, who succeeded him in that role, for their unfailing and continued support of ECE instructors and students.

The department piloted the remote lab kits with a course they offered during the summer of 2020. This pilot, says Fair, in combination with the instructor’s expertise and enthusiasm and the hard work of many ECE technical staff, was critical in enabling the department to gain the experience necessary to successfully develop the broader, curriculum-wide kits delivered in the fall of 2020. 

“We learned a lot that summer about remote labs,” says Fair. “We couldn’t have launched our department-wide effort without that experience, coupled with the patience of our undergraduates and diligent efforts of our graduate TA’s as we all worked together to sort things out.”

In the first year, 1,850 kits were packaged and shipped to 1,500 students in 24 countries and across five continents. Eight unique lab kits were designed to support 13 different ECE courses. 

In instances where ECE labs require large machines or specialized facilities that could not be packaged for students to use at home, professors and technical staff worked together to construct simulation labs and video demonstrations to ensure that students received as close to an in-person lab experience as possible. The professors, technical staff, administrative staff and army of graduate student TA’s then pulled together to offer students an experiential education unlike any they had ever had before.

“The lab kits were a creative solution to the challenging situation of the virtual environment,” explains Adrian Wattamaniuk, President of the Engineering Students’ Society (ESS) and one of the participants. “While students at other universities were stuck with simulations and theory, we were given the chance to perform hands-on experiments that wouldn’t be otherwise possible.” 

In January 2022, from among all ECE accredited programs across North America, the department-wide effort of our ECE Department to adapt classroom educational experiences to a virtual setting was recognized with The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association (ECEDHA) inaugural “Rising to the Challenge Award” for its innovative response to the COVID-19 crisis, and its positive impact on teaching in the pandemic and post-pandemic era.

Fair believes that the remote lab kits will remain a core element of experiential learning beyond the pandemic, limited only by the students’ imagination. 

The Rising to the Challenge Award will be formally presented to the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering during the ECEDHA annual conference in March.

The ECEDHA is the North American-wide organization that represents 250 accredited electrical and/or computer engineering programs across the United States and Canada.