e-Prayog: A new paradigm for electronics laboratories

In engineering education, laboratories provide hands-on experience to students. However, scarcity of equipment, trained faculty, maintenance, upgradation and scheduling of experiments for these laboratories is a big challenge for developing countries like India. Rapid development and ever increasing use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has revolutionised the education system by eliminating limitations in terms of physical distance, time and access, by providing equal opportunity to everyone, irrespective of place and time. The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of the project, e-Prayog, at IIT Bombay as part of Virtual Lab project, an initiative by the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) under National Mission on Education through ICT (NMEICT). As a part of e-Prayog, various electronics lab courses have been developed with four modes, viz., interactive tutorials, computer simulation, remote access of a real experiment, and low cost kit based experiments with complete Learning Management System (LMS).