Using Internet of Things to Enhance Remote Experiments in Learning Management Systems

A Learning Management Systems (LMS) is a tool for creating, distributing, tracking, and managing various types of educational and training material. In a previous work, the authors proposed a framework for a future LMS enhanced by Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities. The authors outlined the expected enhancements that IoT will bring to the LMS functionalities. In this paper, the authors explain the detailed implementation of an LMS application that enables a student to perform a lab experiment remotely via the LMS while using IoT and robotic tools to control and monitor the experiment. The authors explain the implementation details of the application, including the software; hardware; and IoT devices that were used to realize the application objectives and the methods used to connect the LMS to the IoT equipment. In addition, the authors explain the experiments that were made to test the feasibility and efficiency of the application, which was implemented on top of the Moodle LMS using a custom Plugin that was used to connect Moodle to the IoT tools and execute the functionalities of the application.