One Day Workshop on "Virtual Labs"
5th May 2023
Institution’s Innovation Council (IIC), Ministry of Education (MoE), Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurugram being Nodal Center of Virtual Labs of IIT Delhi, conducted one-day workshop on “Virtual Labs” on 5th May, 2023 in association with IIT Delhi. 56 students of ECE/EEE/ECS /ME Department and 07 faculty members participated in the workshop. Three experts from IIT Delhi namely: Mr. Prateek Sharma (Sr. Field Engineer), Mr. Chandan Kumar (Field Engineer), Mr. Vikas Pandey (Field Engineer) conducted the session on Virtual Labs.
Virtual Labs is an initiative of Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Govt of India (GOI) under the National mission on Education through ICT (NMEICT).
The workshop started with the brief introduction of Virtual Labs by Mr. Prateek Sharma (IIT Delhi Expert). He introduced the features and utility of Virtual labs. He briefed the basic purpose of Virtual lab is to enhance the knowledge of students by providing the remote-access to Labs in various disciplines of Science and Engineering. These labs also share the latest equipments and resources, which are otherwise available to limited number of users due to constraints of cost and geographical distances. Virtual Labs would be made more effective and realistic by providing additional inputs to the students like accompanying audio and video streaming of an actual lab experiment and equipment. Remotely triggering an experiment in an actual lab and providing result of the experiment to the student through the computer interface would help the students in carrying out the actual lab experiment.
Internet-based experimentation further permits use of resources – knowledge, software, and data available on the web, apart from encouraging experiments being simultaneously performed by multiple users separated geographically.
Mr. Chandan Kumar (IIT Delhi Expert), stated today most equipment have a computer interface for control and data storage. So, it is possible to design good experiments around some of this equipment which would enhance the learning of students. He also explained the VLab portal, its important features and accesses of various labs developed by different participating institutes. These Virtual Labs cater to students at the undergraduate level, post graduate level as well as to research scholars. The session was very interactive and students enjoyed while learning concepts of the labs. Students were allowed to do hands-on practice on the Virtual Lab Portal. The students were divided into 2 computer labs, where they performed experiments in Electric Machine Lab, Problem Solving Lab, Image processing Lab, Python programing Lab, Basic Electronics Lab, Digital Lab for ECS/EE/ECS students and Metal Forming Virtual Simulation Lab and Mechanical Virtual Lab for Mechanical Students. The students were able to perform at least two experiments on their own in each lab with the guidance of DCE faculty and IIT Delhi experts. In the end, there was an open house discussion between Virtual lab coordinators of all the departments and IIT Delhi Experts. The queries regarding the development of Virtual lab experiments were clarified by the IIT Delhi experts. The workshop gave the exposure to students to perform the experiments and clear their basic concepts of Virtual labs utilizing the Vlab portal.