Design and evaluation of a remote PLC laboratory

The design and evaluation of a remote laboratory for Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) education is presented. The primary objective of the presented remote PLC laboratory is to increase the availability of the physical laboratory. A secondary objective was to develop students’ competence in designing and developing PLC programs. This specific focus on developing design skills within the PLC programming context is the originality contributed by this article. To achieve this originality, a realistic context is provided by basing the laboratory on physical PLCs and their associated industrial programming environments. This context is supported by simulated processes. These processes provide multiple examples to develop design skills and also a media-rich platform which supports problem-solving skills. The laboratory is evaluated using a pre- and post-survey based on the Computer Laboratory Environment Inventory and the results benchmarked. The pre-survey clearly identifies laboratory availability as an issue while the post-survey reveals that the remote laboratory successfully addressed this issue. The post-survey also indicates that the remote laboratory had a positive impact on the overall learning environment. In particular, students perceived that the laboratory problems were more open-ended and less influenced by the instructor.