Microelectronics is an essential component of virtually all aspects of our daily lives. The microelectronics sector in Europe is responsible directly 200,000 and indirectly 1,000,000 high-skilled jobs and the demand for new skills is increasing. In this scenario, ECoVEM project, European Centre of Vocational Excellence in Microelectronics, is a continuing work, based on an existing model for business-education collaboration of the Knowledge Alliance MECA and Sector Skills Alliance in Microelectronics, both targeting tertiary education. The ECoVEM project platform targets vocational excellence on all levels of European Qualification Framework. This project aims to establish a transnational cooperation platform of Vocational Excellence in Microelectronics to tackle the challenges of the: digitalization, artificial intelligence, green technologies, gender equality, and integration of migrants among others. One of these mechanisms is based on develop innovative VET curricula through Massive Open Online Courses. professional online courses serve as catalysts for individual and collective growth, driving innovation, sustainability, and inclusivity within our workforce. They empower individuals to adapt to new challenges, seize opportunities, and contribute meaningfully to their fields, ultimately fostering a more dynamic and resilient workforce for the future.

This paper describes the organization and results of several MOOCs delivered about technical topics (i.e., digital electronics, VHDL design on FPGAs, open education and OERs repositories and the use of STEAM technologies to encourage diversity and inclusion), where online laboratories have been used in some of them. An analysis of the enrollment, students participating on tasks or quizzes, drop-out rate and certifications requests have been done.

This paper discusses the potential of ChatGPT as an assistant to help with natural English paper writing for non-native English speakers. And how if used in an honest way, it can be an educational tool with great potential and not just a plagiarism aid.

This paper describes the design and development of a Remote Laboratory based on a single board computer (Raspberry Pi). This lab consist of 3 experiments, each one of them have a controller with different construction or configuration characteristics, allowing users to experiment with electrical and electronic control elements, presenting the possibility of open and closed control loops.

This Research to Practice Full Paper presents a pilot test framed in educational robotics where parents and child work together during the same session. In recent years, an educational movement has emerged that is related to the introduction of computational thinking, programming, and robotics in schools. Educational robotics is presented as one more resource that serves as a support in the different curricular subjects and facilitates the emergence of skills such as socialization, creative spirit and personal initiative, allowing participants to find answers to the problems that may arise in their reality. It is for this reason that a pilot test was carried out where we included the participants' parents in a session. To do this we used the Crumble controller, a platform that is programmed using block programming language. This platform also allows making electrical connections in an amazingly simple way. From the mechanical point of view, we use materials that can be easily machined, both by children and by inexperienced people. At the end of the experience, the assistants completed the assembly of their own robot. The article contains a study of the state of the art of using educational robotics. It also includes an analysis of the different tools mostly used in educational robotics. Also, throughout the article the learning methodology used, the different educational resources and the results obtained from the experience are described.

Computational Thinking is a competence that is developed more in the last few years. This is due to the multitude of benefits it has in the classroom. Throughout this article we show a series of activities that promote the development of Computational Thinking using tools that allow visual block programming. The particularity of these activities is that some of them were performed during the confinement due to the COVID-19 and other activities were performed later, in the period known as the new normality. Throughout the article, details are provided about the different sessions. The different visual programming tools by blocks and the educational scenarios used are also indicated. In addition, the results obtained are shown.

This paper presents findings on participants of a massive open online course named "Educational Robotics for all" developed under Open edX platform. The document describes the organization and structure of the MOOC and some of its preliminary results. As an example, Module 2 about Gender and STEAM is presented and discussed.

Industry 4.0 is changing not only the way we interact with the world but the way the world communicates with us. Consequently, the term Industry 4.0 implies changes in all the lays of society. Education is an area affected in two ways, how educational curriculum needs to be updated in order to satisfy demands from students, market and society and, as any other area, adapt workforce and infrastructures. In other words, educational institutions must adapt both processes, services and products. In this scenario, online laboratories, also known as web-based laboratories or non-traditional laboratories, emerge as an essential tool for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) areas. Online laboratories have become a very common tool in educational institutions through the last decade based on their anywhere and anytime availability premise. This fact has shown its relevance even more due to covid19 crisis: Online laboratories have been a crucial tool to provide practical activities. However, online laboratories are not only a suitable tool to provide a temporal and ubiquitous access, but they provide unique features and advantages which may fill the gap between education and industry in the 4.0 paradigm. In this paper, we aim to outline how the 4$^{th}$ industrial revolution is concerning education, and specifically focusing on how the Industry 4.0 paradigm is transforming educational web-based laboratories perspective.

This document reflects the contribution of a group of experts in the VISIR (Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality) remote lab, regarding recent advances, initiatives, federation, limitations and future. The methodology for gathering their opinion consisted of a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis on VISIR, following three categories: Technical, Pedagogical and Educational. Major conclusions point to: (1) a need for new technical developments taking advantage of collaborative work; (2) a window of opportunity for expanding VISIR to other institutions, namely in developing countries; and (3) improving the interface for a better pedagogical experience, namely with better error feedback or the inclusion of a virtual tutor.

A didactic experience is presented focused to a group of secondary school to learn the main features of the topic of diode-based circuits. Students have followed the experience by means of a MOOC in which didactic activities and practices have been designed using the Cognitive Motor Model taxonomy. VISIR remote laboratory is the main technical resource to carry out practices.

Remote analog electronics laboratories promotes accessible educational resources anywhere and anytime through a connection of Internet, in order to support online/distance education as a complement of traditional hands-on laboratories. There are several solutions provided by educational institutions. The most widespread solution is Virtual Instruments System in Reality (VISIR). This system is physically installed in 17 Higher Educational Institutions. Five of these systems have been working en bloc within an Erasmus+project: Platform Integration of Laboratories based on the Architecture of visiR. Pilar project consists on a federation of five European VISIR kits sharing resources, experiences and even efforts to provide a wide and innovative educational platform. A tool was developed in order to optimize VISIR-based resources to make them transparent for users, teachers and students. Another Erasmus+project which efforts are focused on the providing e-learning practices and methodologies is e-lives (E-Learning InnoVative Engineering Solutions) project. E-lives project also relies on remote laboratories to foster the integration of operational e-learning good practices and methodologies in the South Mediterranean countries. Actually, a specific objective of the project is the development of reliable remote laboratory solutions for analog electronics. In this sense, under the umbrella of the federation, the aforementioned tool designed for PILAR project may become also beneficial for partners within e-lives project.

Visual block programming environments can be defined as those programming environments that rely on objects rather than words to code the program. These types of environments are characterized by facilitating the task of the people who carry out the programs. This is mainly since they are more visually friendly. In addition, with this type of environment the person who makes the programs will not get the famous syntactic errors that characterize the programming tasks with textual programming languages. Along this paper, a set of tools commonly used in educational robotics are showed. Furthermore, a deep analysis in two of these tools are detailed. Additionally, some educational scenarios are detailed, as long as their relationship to students’ competencies and how to drive the scenarios in order to accomplish with the competencies. Finally, a study of the results from experience is included.

This Research Full Paper presents a survey about science and technology education scaling. At the end of 2013, the Spanish government released an Organic Law for Educational Quality Improvement (LOMCE). Which this law provides is a guide with the aim of getting information about the changes which this law implies and what is impacted. All of this is based on gender equality opportunities. Education curriculum simplification is also included. This article describes the goals, assumptions, and underlying logic about Spanish legislation change has impacted on science and technology education. The aim of this study is to provide learning technologies to drive science and technology education to students. This study includes an analysis of local scope in the modifications of the Spanish educational legislation and data on the actions of different educational agents in Spain. Several educational centers emerged, and other, which already was present, have been growing. In the last years, educational institutions had the need to prepare their teachers for science and technology knowledge. Several educational centers and robotic educational tools commonly used nowadays are summarized. Additionally, the analysis of different use cases has been included as part of this study. Firstly, cases related to the formal education of Spanish educational centers and how the educators of such centers have perceived the change. On the other hand, a specific analysis of a Non-Official Education Centre is included. Thus, as part of the conclusions included in this article, this paper provides the impact of educational scaling improvement in Spain and a set of robotic educational tools to be addressed for classroom.

Educational robotics applied to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) activities combined with a project-based learning (PBL) methodology provides quite good results. Throughout this work it is described how to make use of Scratch, a visual programming environment, as a cost-effective tool with great potential for students to work on concepts related to robotics. When students work with Scratch, they can develop animations or video games in which real life applications are simulated. In this paper you can find the description of the intermediate Scratch module. This module is part of an introductory robotics course consisting of the use of three tools (Scratch, Crumble and Arduino) and three difficulty levels (basic, intermediate and advanced). In addition, the results obtained for the Intermediate Scratch module and a discussion of the most important aspects related to the findings obtained are also provided.

Social demands have promoted an educational approach based on an “anywhere and anytime” premise. Remote laboratories have emerged as the answer to the demands of technical educational areas for adapting themselves to this scenario. The result has not only benefit distance learning students but has provided new learning scenarios both for teachers and students as well as allowing a flexible approach to experimental topics. However, as any other solution for providing practical scenarios (hands-on labs, virtual labs or simulators), remote labs face several constraints inherited from the subsystems of its deployment -hardware (real instruments, equipment and scenario) and software (analog/digital conversions, communications, workbenches, etc.)-. This paper describes the Erasmus+ project Platform Integration of Laboratories based on the Architecture of visiR (PILAR) which deals with several units of the federation installed in different educational institutions and devoted to analog electronics and electrical circuits. Based on the limitations of remote labs, the need for the federation will be justified and its benefits will be described.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of UNESCO establishes goals and targets in areas of critical importance for humanity. Recently, members of the eMadrid network have organized the Conference Learning with MOOCs (LWMOOCS 2018), the leading worldwide global conference, inspired by this year's theme “MOOCs for All - A Social and International Approach”. This paper analyzes the main outcomes of this conference organized around the “Quality Education”, the Sustainable Development Goal 4.

Wind diesel power systems (WDPS) are isolated microgrids which combine diesel generators (DGs) with wind turbine generators (WTGs) to supply a community of consumers. A WDPS can work in three mode of operation: Diesel Only (DO) where only the DGs supply power, Wind Only (WO), where only the WTGs supply power and Wind Diesel (WD), where both type of generators supply power. WDPS dynamic modeling allows short-term simulations in order to test the WDPS stability and power quality. This paper does a review of recent papers on the subject of WDPS dynamic simulation taking into account factors as the WDPS operation mode simulated, the WTG type used in the WDPS or the use of Energy Storage Systems to increase system power quality and stability. Finally using the modeling capabilities of Matlab-Simulink a WDPS consisting of one DG, one WTG, load and a dump load (DL) is modeled. The WDPS is simulated against load and WTG power variations and simulation results show the use of the DL to increase the WDPS stability.

The contents, hereby introduced, show a methodology to teach electricity to Secondary school students. As secondary teachers, one of the highest worries is to recognize the level of significance in learning in our students. Significance means permanent learning and thus, the assimilation of a solid basis conducts to make easier to understand knowledge in higher levels as our students are growing up. As a consequence of these worries, a structured massive open online course has been developed to optimize the assimilation of basic concepts, magnitudes and skills in relation with Electricity contents. The works in relation with the quantification of learning is written in this paper as well in order to show how good our students are learning and what the most important difficulties they find.

The PILAR (Platform Integration of Laboratories based on the Architecture of visiR) Erasmus Plus project started in September 2016 and will last three years. The core of the PILAR project is the VISIR remote laboratory -Virtual Instruments System In Reality-. The project aims for a federation of five of the existing VISIR nodes, sharing experiments, capacity and resources among partners, and to provide access to VISIR remote lab, through PILAR consortium, to students from other educational institutions. PILAR will be the framework from which management tasks will be performed and laboratories/experiments will be shared. PILAR will also foster the Special Interest Group of VISIR under the Global Online Laboratory Consortium (GOLC) of the International Association of Online Engineering (IAOE).

Crumble is an easy-to-use programmable controller. Its programming interface uses a block programming language that makes it easy for children above 10 to use. In addition, the hardware elements associated with Crumble are very intuitive and easy to connect. For this reason, educational robotics can be easily implemented thanks to the card connectors. The motors and servos can be managed by Crumble. Different sensors such as the ultrasonic distance sensor, infrared distance sensor and line sensor can also be connected. In addition, Crumble can handle up to 32 RGB (Red, Green and Blue) LEDs (Light Emitter Diodes) independently and with 24-bit color resolution. Robotics and computational thinking are ideal tools for developing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) pedagogy. Today, robotics training tools are raised with the aim of promoting innovation and motivation of students during the learning process. Robots are becoming more and more common in our daily lives; therefore, it is important to integrate robots into all levels of our society. This document presents a workshop that focuses on two main objectives. The first is to make an event to promote Crumble locally. On the other hand, the aim of this event is to present a robotic teaching tool so that people can take their first steps in the world of robotics. This workshop is aimed at those children and adults who want to discover the possibilities that Crumble brings in the introduction to robotics. An introduction to Crumble in the context of educational robotics is developed throughout this workshop.

Robotics and computational thought are ideal tools for developing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) pedagogy. Throughout this paper a modular and adaptive course is presented, the main objective of which is to make known simple and economic tools of educational robotics. This course is aimed at those who want to discover the possibilities of educational robotics in the context of the introduction to robotics. Today, robotics training tools are raised with the aim of promoting innovation and motivation of students during the learning process. Robots are becoming more and more common in our daily lives; therefore, it is important to integrate robots into all levels of our society. The course is designed to work with the Scratch, Crumble and Arduino tools as STEM enhancers. Using Scratch, interactive stories, games and animations can be programmed. Scratch helps young people to acquire and improve skills such as think creatively, think systematically, and work collaboratively. Scratch is a project of MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten Group. It is offered free of charge. On the other hand, Crumble is an easy-to-use programmable controller. Its programming interface uses a block programming language based on Scratch that makes it easy for children from 10 years old to use it. In addition, the hardware elements associated with Crumble are very intuitive and easy to connect. Last, but not least, Arduino is an open source electronic platform based on hardware and software that is easy to use. It is a platform that incorporates a simple microcontroller and an interface development environment to create the applications to be downloaded on the board. The course offers a three-tiered journey through three levels with each of the three tools. It consists of a total of 9 modules. This course has a very practical approach. A project-based pedagogical methodology is used. Experiments are promoted, where trial and error are part of learning and self-discovery. The student learns to have more autonomy and responsibility. Knowledge is acquired in different disciplines. It develops: motor skills (scale mobility in the hands), group skills, allowing people to socialize, creative abilities, and learning in a fun way. The operational details, materials used and examples of activities for some modules are also presented with the expectation that all teachers will be able to adapt these activities in their class. In addition, results are included from several groups of students who have already completed some modules. Despite not having a large number of students, the experience provided results that may be useful for other teachers to promote a course with similar or equal content for more results. The results of this work show that it is important to combine theory and practice to include fun tasks intertwined with the challenges of applying theory to problem solving.

This paper describes how the Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED) is currently sharing its educational experience on collaborative labs environments with an Argentinean University: the Santiago del Estero National University. This experience takes place within a wider framework provided by the VISIR+ project, which aims to define, implement and evaluate a set of educational modules following an Enquiry-based Teaching and Learning Methodology supported by the VISIR remote lab.

The purpose of this article is to study the dynamic reconfiguration in FPAA and, because of its potential, its academic applications. State driven and algorithmic reconfiguration methods have been considered during this work. Since these devices are not as well-known as FPGA, it is interesting to study its characteristics and abilities. The algorithmic method has been developed, obtaining conclusions about its use in education for technical and non-technical fields.

Reputation systems have been showed as effective mechanisms for capturing and extracting the global view a society has about some entities. Traditionally, these systems are based on capturing users' opinions through quantitative evaluations given by numerical ratings. However, it has been demonstrated that mapping opinions to numerical values might entail biased problems, skewing the reputation of some entities. In this work, we present our proposal for dealing with such problems, based on capturing opinions through comparative evaluations. Besides, we state that this mechanism can be successfully applied in MOOCs, in order to estimate the reputation of learning resources, allowing us to provide students/users with better resources.

This paper describes the design, development and first results and impressions of a novel Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) on industrial electronics practices. This was possible by implementing a state-of-the-art remote laboratory within the MOOC to allow online delivery of such practices-which makes this MOOC a first of its kind. Thus, the core of the MOOC is the remote laboratory Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality (VISIR) and the experimentation carried out on it. A preliminary discussion on the design and structure of the MOOC is presented, based on the learning analytics of the MOOC platform and the operations record stored by the remote laboratory. The students' profile interested in this kind of MOOCs and their needs for getting advantage out of the remote laboratory are also considered in the discussion. The conclusions will result in modifications in this MOOC for a re-edition and the evaluation of the convenience of an advanced new MOOC.

The evolution of Web 3.0 and consequently eLearning 3.0 have demanded a major change of the way learning objects are provided and implemented. It is foreseen that learning objects in eLearning 3.0 should be interoperable and easily discovered, and will represent any kind of virtual or physical object. Several approaches attempted to implement remote Laboratories as a Service (LaaS) in order to achieve such interoperability and to allow their integration into heterogeneous educational systems for pedagogical purposes and for more convenience, as well as, their coupling and mashing up with other learning objects in order to yield a scaffold and rich educational environment. This paper provides a broad study on the available middleware solutions for service-oriented remote laboratories implementation, emphasizing the pros and cons of each and the upcoming challenges in developing service-oriented remote laboratories.

In this paper we focus on the achievements of eMadrid initiative in some fields of technology-enhanced learning, mainly involving the improvement of the mechanisms for open educational content retrieval from Internet, considering Internet resources as potential learning objects. Also we facilitate the integration of remote laboratories and external tools in virtual campuses architectures supporting enriched capabilities and describe a way to cluster and identify learner weaknesses using a learning analytics approach in combination with the item response theory.

A vast number of learning content and tools can be found over Internet. Currently, most of them are ad-hoc solutions which are developed for a particular learning platform or environment. New concepts, such as Widgets, Smart devices, Internet of Thing and learning Clouds, are ideas whose goals is the creation of shareable online learning scenarios over different devices and environments.

This paper reports on a new designed electronics practices with the remote laboratory Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality (VISIR). The proposed practices encompasses many common electronic circuits for electronic circuits related subjects within the undergraduate engineering education as well as for the postgraduate degrees and the vocational training courses. A new range of components and black boxed circuits have been added to VISIR such as inductors and converter circuits. This paper shows the configuration of the VISIR's switching matrix and provides a case study with results. The proposed practices are aimed to be conducted online as en essential task of the subject “Power Supplies for ICT Equipment”; a subject delivered by the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department (DIEEC) of the Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED) within a new European online master degree program in Information and Communication Systems (ICS) in which UNED is a partners along with other four European university partners from different European countries. Remote laboratories forms an integral part of all master's subject in order to foster experimentation and to prepare qualified and skilled graduates. The proposed practices covers most of the subject's content and are totally administrated and delivered online in accordance with the master's objectives.