ENHANCING ON-LINE ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION THROUGH A VIRTUAL LABORATORY

On-line education is utilized extensively and has been found to be effective in a multitude of subject areas, including engineering education.However, for on-line education to be fully effective in engineering education, a means must be developed to provide on-line students with laboratory experiences that achieve the same learning outcomes as face-to-face laboratories.To address this need, a pilot computer program, Project VELVET (Virtual Electronics Laboratory for Visualized Education and Training), for a virtual electronics laboratory is being developed.VELVET operates on Windows-based computers in a real-time environment.It presents to its user a virtual breadboard into which components may be inserted.A dc power supply and a signal generator are available to supply energy and signals to circuits, and measurements may be made with a virtual millimeters and a virtual oscilloscope.The algorithm and sample screen images of the program are presented in this paper.