Distributed architecture for adaptive intelligent environments

Increasingly web based distance education engineering courses are on offer, augmented by the provision of remote experimentation laboratories facilitating distant access to campus based physical resources. The design and implementation of effective and usable remote experimentation facilities poses unique challenges given the inherent complexities of the learning environment and the constraints imposed by the delivery medium. Developments in recent years have addressed many of these issues. However autonomous learning environments by their very nature offer minimal educator assistance and from a students perspective it is inevitable that at some stage of the experimental process, context specific help will be required. This paper seeks to address this issue in the context of remote experimentation for embedded systems and presents a distributed communications application implemented using a web services/.NET Remoting framework for an adaptive intelligent learning environment.