One Day Workshop on "VIRTUAL LABS"
2nd December 2022
Dronacharya Group of Institutions, Greater Noida in association with IIT Delhi conducted one day workshop on “Virtual Labs” on 2nd December 2022. 72 students of ECE, EEE, ECZ and ME streams and 4 faculty members participated in the workshop. Three experts from IIT Delhi conducted the session on Virtual Labs: Mr. Prateek Sharma (Sr. Field Engineer), Mr. Arpit Sharma (Field Engineer) and Mr. Vikas Pandey (Field Engineer).
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).
Mr. Prateek Sharma, briefed the gathering about Virtual Labs. He introduced the features and usefulness of Virtual labs. He introduced the basic purpose of Vlab to enhance the knowledge of students by providing the remote-access to Labs in various disciplines of science and engineering. Virtual Lab shares expensive equipment and resources, which are otherwise available to a small number of users due to cost constraints and geographical ranges. Remotely triggering an experiment in a real lab and delivering the results to the student via a computer interface would entail 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.
Next Mr. Prateek, stated that in today’s world most the equipment’s are computer interfaced and have remote access. So, it is possible to design experiments involving every domain of science and engineering which would improve the learning of students. In VLab portal, he explained its 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.
Hands on Practice in Labs :
In this session students were allowed to do hands-on practice on the Virtual Lab Portal. The students were divided into 2 groups, where they performed experiments in Electric Machine Lab, Problem Solving Lab Image processing Lab, Python programing Lab, Basic Electronics Lab, Digital Lab for ECE/EEE/ECZ students and Metal Forming Virtual Simulation Lab and Mechanical Virtual Lab for ME students. The students were able to perform at least two experiments on their own in each lab with the guidance of DGI faculty and IIT experts.
Open House Discussion between DGI faculty and IIT experts
In the end, there was an open house discussion between Virtual Lab coordinators of DCE, Gurgaon and IIT experts. The queries regarding the development of Virtual Lab experiments were clarified by the IIT Delhi experts.
Overall, the workshop was knowledgeable, especially for undergraduate students. The students got to know the basic concepts of Virtual labs. The workshop gave the exposure to perform the experiments in VLab.