Building an Interactive E-Lab

There has been an increasing emphasis on enhancing students’ practical experience acquiring from the higher education, focusing not only on the development of academic and intellectual capabilities and subject knowledge, but also on the development of skills to equip students for employability. A practical training system that allows instruments to be monitored and controlled over the Internet leaves plenty of room to be studied. This training system can easily be turned into online experiment that allows students at remote locations to control and obtain real-time measurements or experimental data (Tan & Soh, 2001). Actually, some students like to read books to gain knowledge, while others prefer to understand theories deeper through experiment (Chu, 1999; Whelan, 1997). Both of these knowledge-based and investigative types of learning styles have profound and different effects on the delivery and acceptance of engineering education.