A pilot study: The effect of using Virtual laboratory on students' conceptual understanding in Mobile Communications

Laboratory work is an integral part of science and engineering education. Traditionally hardware experiments dominate the electronics engineering laboratory work. Course on Mobile communications has problems due to limited scope of available hardware especially for students' conceptual learning. As a result, the lab work in the Mobile Communications course is carried out using simulation software such as Matlab, Scilab etc. Students are able to verify various concepts studied in theory using these simulations. The problem of using these software simulations is that the students focus shifts from understanding the concepts underlying the experiment to writing the Matlab or Scilab code. We carried out a pilot study to address this problem using the new technology Virtual Laboratories available online. In this paper we present the results of the pilot study carried out with 150 students at UG level and 18 students at PG level in an autonomous college under university of Mumbai using Mobile Communications Virtual laboratory. The results indicate an increase in the students' understanding of core concepts such as frequency reuse, channel fading and various handoff strategies. The students' have given a positive feedback in the course exit survey regarding their experience with the new lab format. They find working with these labs more interesting and motivating. The performance of students in the test at the end of semester has improved in questions related to the core concepts.