Amrita Virtual Labs

In 2009, the Ministry of Human Resources Development funded a massive initiative as part of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NME-ICT) to make engineering labs available online. In response to this initiative, the Virtual Amrita Laboratories Universalizing Education (VALUE Virtual Labs) Virtual Labs Project was initiated to provide laboratory-learning experiences to college and university students across India who may not have access to adequate laboratory facilities or equipment. The dozens of labs developed with extensive peer-review are now ready for field testing and deployment in engineering colleges all over India.This project hopes to reach out to India’s millions of engineering and science students at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The Virtual Labs Project is providing virtual laboratory experiments that directly support the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the University Grants Commission (UGC) model curricula for engineering and sciences undergraduate and postgraduate programs. VALUE virtual labs focuses on interdisciplinary research in higher education involving Educational psychology, Learning Science and Instructional Design. Research, on both virtual and traditional classroom learning environments, pedagogy, learning and cognition, explores ways to innovate and optimize student learning in Science and Engineering Education. Amrita’s research catering to diverse student backgrounds has shown spectacular results in improved visualization of theoretical concepts, enhanced practical skills in experimentation, broader and deeper understanding of complex ideas and genuine curiosity to explore further. VALUE virtual labs implements state-of-the art technology in providing computer simulated, remote triggered and interactive animation based experiments through their virtual labs website. This service employs cutting-edge technology and is made available to all via the internet. Funded by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, the virtual laboratories in a variety of disciplines were developed by Amrita University in collaboration with other premier Universities including the IITs (Delhi, Kanpur, Kharaghpur, Mumbai, Chennai, Guwahati, Roorkee), under the National Mission on Education through ICT. The virtual laboratories would help students to understand better the complex scientific questions while at the same time motivate them to pursue cross-disciplinary, innovative research.Running virtual labs will not require any additional infrastructural setup at the user‘s premises. All that is required is to access virtual labs in a computer terminal with broadband internet connection. These experiments are hosted for open access through the main project website http://vlab.co.in and at the university link http://amrita.vlab.co.in/.