The Prospects of Virtual Laboratories in Engineering Education across Africa - A Case Study in Electrical Engineering

A lot of African countries are underdeveloped owing to the lack of good education. In most African countries the poor economic health is responsible for the lack of proper infrastructure in the education sector. Therefore, the need for alternative means to educate the future generation arises. In Engineering a lot of laboratory work and apparatus are required, whereas only a few Universities can afford this. In Electrical Engineering for instance, "electrical machines" is a very vital topic that requires a lot of laboratory work. The analysis of induction machines is very expensive to experiment on in the lab, and this machine is the most widely used in the industry. This educational gap means that graduates are underequipped and unable to perform optimally in the industry without rigorous training exercise. This study investigates the use of a virtual laboratory (LabVIEW) to model and analyse induction motors with the aim of achieving results that closely conform to the standard characteristics of induction motors. The results obtained confirm that the use of virtual laboratories should be encouraged where finance is a problem as accurate results were obtained from the study.