| 2006 |
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YEAR BOOK |
University of Ulster
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ProculTech Project - from a distance technologies
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Providing training for staff in high technology companies is becoming increasingly difficult, as time to market constraints no longer accommodate prolonged off-site periods. Remote training via the web offers a number of benefits including flexibility of access to suit the financial commitments, time constraints and staff development of modern companies. The ProculTech project's remote access integrated training and design environment offers new solutions in the delivery of advanced remote access training on tailored technical courses with collaborative remote access experimental facilities.
Remote experimentation offered as part of a web-based learning approach affords a number of critical benefits. In remote experimentation, learners can configure technical equipment and get results with the added flexibility of completing practical exercises unconstrained by time or geographical considerations. In addition, the remote technical facility offers benefits in terms of easing the difficulties experienced by busy engineering professionals, with respect to finding the time for continuing professional development in an area of rapid technological changes.
The ProculTech project has developed a software and hardware environment to provide a remote-access technical facility for embedded systems, enabling learners to access and control specialised equipment and instrumentation over the Internet and perform experiments on real (not simulated) embedded systems. The project builds on preliminary work developed during an EPSRC funded project and an InvestNI Proof of Concept project. A critical aspect of the project is the collaborative, distributed working environment, designed to support both collaborative learning and the development of products with diversely located design and test design staff. The collaborative client application allows connected users to work together via shared access to a dedicated desktop environment, or receive live lectures and learning material from a tutor. The ability to link hardware elements to the collaborative system facilitates the remote evaluation of hardware products or solving hardware related problems through the combined effort of people across multiple sites.
Contact:Prof Martin McGinnity, Associate Dean (Acting),
Intelligent Systems Engineering Laboratory,
Faculty of Engineering, Magee Campus, University of Ulster.
Tel: 028 71375616. Fax: 028 70324905
E-mail: [email protected]