This full-scale EMD collaborative effort involves five universities, namely, Arizona State University (ASU), the University of Washington Bothell (UWB), the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), the University of Rhode Island (URI), and the University of Central Florida (UCF). The project involves significant educational technology innovations and software extensions that enable the ASU online prototype software Java-DSP (J-DSP; http://jdsp.asu.edu) to be used in undergraduate courses across the five participating universities. Problems that are being addressed include the delivery of technology-enhanced laboratory experiences to undergraduate students using novel Java tools, and the broad assessment of these practices across the participating universities. The project tasks and objectives include: a) software development towards producing a new delivery technology, b) considerable mathematical functionality extensions of J-DSP, c) development of laboratory exercises by all the Co-PIs at the different universities, d) a geographically-diverse assessment that involves the faculty specialists at all five universities, e) a comprehensive pilot test of a new revolutionary multi-site laboratory concept that allows students in the five universities to concurrently run real-time integrated online simulations using the planned connectivity upgrades on J-DSP, and f) dissemination and publication of all results. The educational innovation is enabling distance learners to conduct laboratories over the Internet. The concepts developed in this project are serving as a model for developing and conducting online labs in other science disciplines.
