The online labs aim at supporting inquiry-based learning and providing the possibility to conduct scientific experiments in a virtual environment. Inquiry is the process in which students are engaged in scientifically oriented questions, perform active experimentation, formulate explanations from evidence, evaluate their explanations in sense of alternative explanations, and communicate and justify their proposed explanations.
Importantly, the inquiry process should be well structured and scaffolded to achieve optimal learning results. Scaffolding refers to support (dedicated software tools) that helps students with tasks that they cannot complete on their own. For example, they can help students to create hypotheses, design experiments, make predictions, formulate interpretations of the data, reflect upon the learning process, plan and structure their work, and monitor what has been done.
Online laboratories can be of two kinds. Remotely-operated educational labs (remote labs) provide students with the opportunity to collect data from a real physical laboratory setup, including real equipment, from remote locations. As an alternative there are virtual labs that simulate the real equipment. Remote and virtual labs both have specific advantages for learning and can be combined to support specific learning activities.
The advantage of remote labs is that they do not mimic the real lab, but students actually operate on real equipment. Remote labs thus give a more realistic view on scientific practice, including practical aspects such as occupied equipment etc. Concerning the ease of experimentation the advantages go in the direction of virtual labs. In virtual laboratories students can easily and repeatedly experiment without any costs so that ideas can be quickly tested and evaluated. Another advantage for virtual laboratories is that reality can be adapted to serve the learning process.
In addition to being an excellent context for learning activities, lab work also forms a unique setting to develop soft skills such as autonomy and collaboration. In modern labs work is always done in teams and the ability to work with others is a requirement for skilful lab work. One of the intended outcomes of learning with Go-Lab online labs is that students acquire those skills. Collaboration also helps to raise students’ conceptual knowledge and inquiry skills in an inquiry learning situation. Further, the usage of online labs increases students’ motivation, thus, influencing learning process and results in a positive way.