A "Mobile Virtual Lab" for Supporting Engineering Curricula

E-Learning is offering new approaches and opportunities in the field of education above all in the sector of the virtual laboratories. The opportunity to interact with the real instruments that are in a lab represents an effective way for the implementation of a teaching approach oriented to a problem solving strategy. The wide diffusion of mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) makes this approach more effective and appealing for the students. In this paper we introduce Jini Technologies to design and implement a distributed architecture for a mobile virtual lab for supporting the activities of an Electronic Measurement Course. The aim of this environment is offering to the students the opportunity to experiment a real interaction with the laboratory's instruments everywhere and every time by the use of mobile devices. A prototype of the architecture and its services will be discussed and an evaluation campaign will be showed.