WORKSHOP

Dronacharya College of Engineering Gurgaon, being a nodal center of Virtual Lab, IIT Delhi, organized a one day workshop on “Virtual Lab” on 29th Feb 2016, for Mechanical Engineering students.

The Virtual Lab is an initiative of Ministry of Human Resources & Development (HRD) towards the growth of students who are residing in the remote areas of the country, so that they can also get an access to laboratories in various disciplines of science and engineering at all levels from undergraduate to research. 100 participants including faculty members from Mechanical Engineering branch participated in the workshop.

The workshop was inaugurated by the hon’ble Principal Prof (Dr.) B.M.K. Prasad along with the experts from IIT Delhi. The workshop began with a welcome address of Mrs. Dimple Saproo, Coordinato,r Virtual Lab Nodal Center, Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon. She shared her views on the importance and usage of Virtual Lab portal. She also encouraged the students to utilize the facility provided by the Ministry of (HRD) of Government of India, under the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology to enhance their practical knowledge and skills. Mr. T.T. Das Coordinator, Virtual Lab from IIT Delhi and his team members introduced the concept of Virtual Lab portal to mechanical technocrats. Mr. T.T Das stated that the main objective of the workshop was to make students aware of the virtual lab portal and its benefits in the practical subjects.

Next session was conducted by Mr. Jithin Lal, an expert from IIT Delhi, who mentioned the coverage of this portal to various branches of science and technology. He stated that this portal would help students in learning basic and advanced concepts through remote experimentation. It is a platform where students can utilize various tools for learning, including additional web - resources, video - lectures, animated demonstrations and self - evaluation. He also mentioned that it is a kind of virtual physical laboratory which can be accessed at any time and any place without any help .

The following salient features of Virtual Labs were covered during the workshop:

1. Modeling the physical phenomenon by a set of equations and carrying out simulations to yield the result of the particular experiment. This can, at - the - best, provide an approximate version of the ‘real - world’ experiment.

2. Providing measured data for virtual lab experiments corresponding to the data previously obtained by measurements on an actual system.

3. Remotely triggering an experiment in an actual lab and providing the student the result of the experiment through the computer interface. This would entail carrying out the actual lab experiment remotely.

The workshop provided a glimpse to mechanical graduates how to access laboratories of several renowned institutes through the use of Virtual Lab portal. It was a great platform to share costly equipment and resources, which are otherwise available to limited number of users due to constraints on time and geographical distances.