Platform Integration of Laboratories based on the Architecture of visiR Erasmus Project

Project Title

Platform Integration of Laboratories based on the Architecture of visiR

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Open and distance learning

Project Summary

The context of the PILAR project in summary is the integration of the 5 main existing VISIR system in Europe in 2016 inside a new coordinated and Federated system, known as VISIR Federation, that allow an open access to the (new developed and old ones) hardware, software, courses, educational activities and document repository as well as the organization andmanagement fo the VISIR Federation inside the IAoE Association organization.

As final summary of the PILAR project and VISIR Federation we accomplished those main objectives pursued during the exploitation phase,
• A reliable, highly available VISIR Federation, which integrates all the different VISIR resources, used at each of the VISIR providers.
• VISIR Federation is completely opened to other partners in Europe, through easy gateways to the federation, allowing extending the capabilities of PILAR to much more interested educational institutions.
• A much larger set of practices as from the past developments of VISIR systems.
• Remote lab services are provided to students in all the partners’ institutions and to anyone interested worldwide. The results added value at European Union level because the activities can not be attained in a single country.
• These new VISIR Remote Laboratory Internet services are provided in a transparent way for teachers and students.
• A much more efficient and effective use of VISIR resources.
• The VISIR Federation provides the required infrastructure to teachers without having their own one in order to exploit Open Educational Resources based on VISIR Remote .Laboratories.
• A federation web which will serve as a repository and as a mean of spreading the federation.
• The VISIR Federation platform allows a much better control of the students’ learning process when students use the VISIR Federation platform and Remote .Laboratories services.

The project integrated 8 different complementary partners, including 5 Universities involved in the project (UNED, University fo Deusto, Porto Polytechnic Institute, BTH and CUAS) that have a mixed face-to-face and online, public and private orientation, with more than 25 years of activity in all of them, with an average of near 50 years of activity and in some cases reaching more than 100 years of activity. VET institution (OMNIA) bring a view of the vocational learning needs and of the practical works to be performed online and onsite. Finally, Management and Exploitation SME (EVM) and Institutional Association (IAoE) bring a detailed view of the needs of the exploitation of the project as well as the implications to be developed to increase the visibility and sustainability of the outcomes.

Main activities developed follow two different phases on the project:
1. Pilot phase, to develop a new website and repository, a new courses area based on Moodle and a final evaluation of the activities developed during the pilot phase to improve the deployments and developments.
2. Exploitation phase to granted fully open access of the educational activities, repositories, courses and website, having a transparent access to the VISIR systems integrated in the PILAR platform and the final implementation of the VISIR Federation to allow the coordinating of future activities after the PILAR project end.

http://pilar.ieec.uned.es/

Through this website we connect with the courses website, where based in Moodle the user/s can have access to all the educational activities.

https://pilar.ieec.uned.es/moodle/

As a final website, we provide the multilingual website of the project with the products, newsletters, etc.

http://www.ieec.uned.es/pilar-project/index.html?lng=en

As final results of the project, we can remark the stability of the VISIR Federation to allow the future evolution and the worldwide integration fo the stakeholders, users, researchers, hardware, software and educational developers around the PILAR platform. All the reports of the project will be openly available after the review and final close the project, in the Beneficiary Project Details link of the European Union as well as inside the website and repository of the project.

And as tangible system, PILAR platform allows the open access and use of the five integrated VISIR systems at any time and from anywhere with a transparent access to them, and selecting a wide variety of courses and educational activities to perform there. The impact of the PILAR developed system and the usability have been presented and used in several of the most important international events on the area of online engineering and engineering education like EDUNINE 2018, REV 2018, EDUCON 2018, TAEE 2018, TALE 2018, EDUNINE 2019, REV 2019, EDUCON 2019 and exp.at’19, from Latin America (Argentina and Peru) to Europe (Germany and Spain), Middle East (Arab Emirates) to Far Asia (India and Australia).

The longer-term benefits are one of the main core activities inside the project. The agreement and level of integration fo the project partners are th

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 262815 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE EDUCACION A DISTANCIA & Country: ES

Project Partners

• BLEKINGE TEKNISKA HOGSKOLA
• INTERNATIONALE GESELLSCHAFT FUR ONLINE ENGINEERING VEREIN
• UNIVERSIDAD DE LA IGLESIA DE DEUSTO ENTIDAD RELIGIOSA
• INSTITUTO POLITECNICO DO PORTO
• ESPOON SEUDUN KOULUTUSKUNTAYHTYMA OMNIA
• ECOSISTEMAS VIRTUALES Y MODULARES SL
• Fachhochschule Kärnten – gemeinnützige Privatstiftung