Starting this winter, students taking Professor Bert Hesselink's EE261 The Fournier Transform and Its Applications will collaborate on-line to conduct real-time experiments on laboratory equipment located on-campus, with physical results. Called an "I-lab." Hesselink and his partners at Senvid Corporation, a company co-founded by Hesselink in 1999, developed this technology.

"Until this year, we had no physical lab for the course," says Hesselink. "I used to pack up equipment for a demonstration onto a rolling table and wheel it across campus. It was no substitute for students having hands-on laboratory experience. The I-Lab can be used to give physical illustrations to complement what is being taught in class in a way that was not possible before."

Lab in a Box: Research from the Virtual Campus

In a corner of a Stanford lab, Hesselink has lab equipment and materials built to a miniature scale, housed in a box, and attached to a server. Small video cams connected to the same server monitor and record everything that happens in the "Lab in a box," and transmit the data through the new I-lab software via the Internet, to students.

A student logs onto the I-lab via the Internet on a Wednesday. She has already formed a study group with a graduate student on the Stanford campus and a Chicago engineer who takes the course via SOL. She works for a company near Stanford and views the class via SITN. The I-lab operates 24/7, so she signs up for a lab time of 8:00 a.m. on Sunday morning without worrying about whether a lab instructor is available. Before Sunday, through I-lab software, all three students will:

• access and review the professor's notes,
• study procedural and background notes on the scheduled laboratory experiment,
• review a full course syllabus, and
• review class notes and research materials.

On Sunday morning, all three students log onto the lab and begin the experiment.

• Using simulated knobs and buttons students send commands via the Internet to adjust the equipment and environmental settings in the "Lab in a Box" at Stanford.
• The video cams record the physical impact of the adjustments and broadcast them back to the students via video streaming.
• Students record and collect data using the I-Lab tools.
• Members of the lab group chat with each other online, discussing the procedures and what they see, and make further adjustments.
• During the lab, the teaching assistant or professor logs on, offers feedback on the experiment underway, and answers questions the lab group may have.
• The group finishes the experiment and each student enters notes in his or her I-Lab "notebook," prepares required lab reports, and logs off.

In an entirely virtual setting, the lab group has completed a laboratory experiment in a physical lab, viewing and learning from the actual results of their commands.

Distance Learning Innovation

Hesselink anticipates an enhanced learning and teaching experience. "I can interact more with distance students: offer suggestions and give feedback during their labs. I haven't had this kind of opportunity to work with distance students before." In removing time and distance barriers which isolate distance learners from their peers and from instructors, the I-lab offers the learning benefits from live collaborative activities "The labs immediately engage the students," continues Hesselink. "They learn by doing and encounter all of the variables that happen with real experimentation."

Stanford's EE261 is the first course in which this technology is integrated into the curriculum for all students, both on-campus and off. It allows distance students experiment, to fail, and ultimately to discover through practical application in the same setting as on-campus students. As Hesselink points out, the I-lab truly "levels the playing field."

Bert Hesselink has won many awards for teaching and research.