| Abstract |
Engineering programs have continually been looking for ways to teach classes remotely and to improve the remote learning experience. This is especially challenging for laboratory classes with hands on exercises and the benefits of working with a lab partner. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the need for meaningful remote laboratory experiences prompting the development of a new remote laboratory for an upper level communication systems course. In this paper, we describe the logistics of successfully running the laboratory remotely, the laboratory exercises, and the student survey results regarding their remote laboratory experience. Goals of the laboratory include having it still maintain the visual learning aspects of a traditional lab; having the student still work with a lab partner; having an environment where the teaching assistant or professor can interact with either the entire class or with individual lab groups. Simulink was chosen as the platform for carrying out the laboratory exercises. Simulink is commonly used in industry and especially in disciplines such as communication systems. In Simulink, the laboratory exercises can be constructed such that the students design, build, and test the communication system based on fundamental concepts. As an added pedagogical bonus, this is also the only class where the electrical and computer engineering students are exposed to Simulink, so they now graduate with an additional skill set. Zoom was chosen as the platform for interaction between the instructor and the students. At the beginning of the laboratory section, the instructor can interact with the entire class, but then use Zoom’s breakout room feature to pair up students placing lab partners into breakout rooms. In this environment the two lab partners can talk amongst themselves, share their screen with each other and to some extent interact as if they were at a laboratory bench together. They can also use a feature of zoom to get the attention of the instructor so that the instructor would know they had a question and can enter into their breakout room. The instructor can also go from one breakout room to the next to see if each lab group has any questions. The instructor can also share their screen with the individual breakout rooms to help each lab group overcome any difficulties. Once in their breakout rooms, the students would log in remotely to access MATLAB/Simulink to carry out the laboratory assignments. There are six laboratory exercises; each designed to be carried out during a two hour laboratory period. Each laboratory exercise also has a pre-lab assignment directly related to some aspects of the laboratory. The exercises ranged from fundamentals to advanced topics in communication systems. An introductory video was prepared by the instructor to get the students started with Simulink and to initiate the first laboratory exercise. The first two laboratories cover the fundamental concepts of Fourier analysis and sampling. These lab exercises included using real world signals such as audio files which tended to make it more meaningful to the students. Another major purpose of the first laboratory exercise is to get the students oriented with Simulink especially Simulink’s oscilloscope and spectrum analyzer since these are used extensively throughout the other lab assignments. Laboratory exercises three and four covered traditional analog communication topics of AM and FM but also set the framework for digital carrier communication methods. The fifth laboratory exercise covered baseband digital communication systems while the sixth laboratory exercise covered digital carrier communications including BPSK and QPSK. The digital communication laboratory exercises included channel effects, the use or equalizers, eye and constellation diagrams, and bit error rates. Additional laboratory exercises could easily be added in the Simulink environment. Surveys were carried out at the end of course to assess the students’ perspective on their learning experience from the laboratory exercises. An important finding was that 93% felt that the online format for the laboratory exercises was an effective way to run the lab, with 97% feeling they had a reasonable understanding of the concepts covered in the laboratory. Of those surveyed, 81% of students strongly felt the laboratory exercises reinforced their understanding of the topics studied in the course. Also, 88% said that the exercises increased or strongly increased their interest in communication systems, while 94% felt they had at least a reasonable introductory level knowledge of Simulink.
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, Md. Abul Hossain 
