A Hands-on Workshop on Online Labs at Amrita University’s Mysore Campus

A hands-on workshop for the Online Labs project was held at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetam, Mysore Campus on the 12th December 2012. The workshop was part of a two-day national conference on ‘Universalisation of Secondary Education: Prospects and Challenges‘that was held at the same campus on 11th & 12th December 2012. Around 100 delegates, mainly teachers, academicians, administrators, research scholars, undergraduate and postgraduate students from several institutions across Mysore District participated in the workshop.

In the demo session, CREATE team members, Rathnam and Sangeetha gave a brief introduction to Online Labs and explained some of the experiments such as ‘Bell Jar Experiment’ and ‘Chemical Reactions’ to the participants. This was followed by a hands-on session where participants had the opportunity to test and explore the system themselves.

The participants who attended the workshop were able to access the content of Online Labs and explore the experiments on their own. The whole program grasped the interests of the participants, evoked their curiosity and made them aware of the benefits of incorporating this educational tool in mainstream education.

At the end of the workshop, participants filled out a brief survey online that captured their feedback regarding the hands-on workshop, their opinions of the effectiveness of Online Labs and general comments.

“This is my first experience to get connected with animated lab experiments. It is really good and very useful for teachers and students”. “Good if you develop similar kinds of software for language subjects,” remarked S. Shivakumar, one of the participants from RIMSE.