With the rapid development in IT, would virtual Laboratories be a good

substitute for real ones in engineering? Elaborate on the merits and demerits of
the issue.
The world consumers are becoming commercially available towards the
market today. Since the existence of human cognition, people had known to use the
materials around the environment to fulfil their needs. When the world is starting to
transform, in terms of technology and social awareness, consuming seems to increase
drastically at its rate. From the developed technology today, everyone is able to do
most of the things easily and feasibly. For example, people are able to get contact with
each other anytime and anywhere, provided that they have a phone in their hands. It
seems so funny that people in the past need to travel for a very long distance just to
tell one another something. However, considering the consuming rate of peaks at this
moment, relative sectors start worrying about the entire balance of the ecosystem. If
this issue is left without solution, the resources on earth would indeed extinct one day.
The experts, therefore, started to find solution and creating new methods and devices
to avoid excess usage of resources. Virtual Laboratories would be one good invention
that can settle this issue. However, certain doubts were also arises from it, causing a
debate on the issue of merits and demerits of implementing virtual laboratories as a
substitution. In fact, this great decision falls on the hand of engineering sectors as it
would be the most implied amongst the other sectors. Engineering experts were
evaluating this and thus bringing up researches and reports on the outcome of their
effort.
Virtual laboratory is one of the inventions that experts and members from the
engineering sectors were proud of. It is defined as a stimulated interaction
encompassing the contributions of technology, education theory and individual human
influences. In short, virtual laboratory allow lab operation to be carried out virtually. It
is especially useful to provide environments for learners to demonstrate a transfer of
knowledge from theoretical to practical application. Besides lowering the
consumption of material, it is more easily understood by others when dealing with a
practice of difficulties, especially those easily affected by surrounding variables.
Those users of virtual laboratory are able to generate and manipulate virtual tools,
allowing them to perform experiments on internet and publish world widely. For the
outsider, it is easy for them to access to the sources shared and imitate what they had
observed locally. When learners could experience much of these technologies, then
they could also obtain the well-rounded and complete education experience. While
talking about the applications of the virtual laboratory, it seems quite interesting and
attractive at first. However, studies do not show that virtual laboratory is not as
perfect as imagined. Not the mention the implementation and application of virtual
laboratory, experts and the communities have to reach to an agreement where the
merits can achieve at its maximum, while the demerits can be morally and minimally
accept by all sides. This is hard to achieve from different perspective as the
community only hope for the external outcome of the technologies, while the experts

have to take every aspect into consideration, either beneficial or risky, such as the
effectiveness, impact towards the environment, healthcare issue, etc.
From the perspective of the community, the cost of the application of virtual
laboratory into their lives is considerably low compared to the current methods. When
dealing with a real laboratory, particularly a scientific experiment, a lot of materials
and apparatus have to be provided for the users to carry out and possess the practical
training from the process and the result of the experiment. While the staffs have to
seek out for channel to obtain sufficient material and apparatus for a certain amount of
learners, virtual laboratory does not need any preparation before experiment, provided
the devices for the virtual laboratory had been set up earlier. Furthermore, conditions
in reality often take people into burdens. Examples such as the amount and quantity of
the material and apparatus, the condition of the instrument, replacement for those
wear and tears and damaged, etc. Virtual laboratory provide the least concern needed
even if the experiment is planned in an immediate condition. This is significant for the
host to be able to deal with large numbers of learners. The community definitely
would vote for it upon its convenience and low cost provided. Besides the cost of
material and apparatus, operating and maintenance fees are also relatively low
compared to the real laboratories. As mentioned, instrument in real laboratory are
often easily damaged, depending on how proper the usage of the instruments are by
the users. Hence, these instruments always need to be managed and examined
thoroughly. When damage is diagnosed, immediate repair and replacement have to be
done before the instrument went worn out provided insufficient apparatus for the
learners. Besides, daily maintenance and expertise to function effectively for the
instruments is considered a daily routine for the real lab manager to be done. At the
contrast, virtual laboratory is relatively easy to manage and to be supplied effectively
for the learners to apply into their education.
Furthermore, the communities concern is also based on the degree of
conveniences that the virtual laboratory could bring along upon implementation. In
the introduction of the virtual lab, it initiates a speciality that is far more convenient
compared to real laboratory, it accessibility. For recent cases, people had to get to the
real lab for any experiments, either for operation of the experiments or any other
business relative to the experiments, regardless of how far and how inconvenience is
for the person to travel. However, with the invention of virtual laboratory, these issues
are no more a problem. Virtual laboratories accessibility, namely Open and Distance
Learning (ODL) is a new way of education and learning method for every learner.
This is all thanks to the rapid development of Information and Communications
Technology (ICT), lectures, tutorials and laboratories were unnecessary to be
delivered in conventional way anymore. Particularly, the education of engineering
courses, are very suitable to imply via ODL, as their practical work is hardly to be
assemble and performed to others, thus making everyone smattering. Moreover,
learners get to apply theoretical knowledge into the virtual lab more easily. Besides
having the training practically, learners get to verify their knowledge through these

virtual laboratory, thus making them more easy to understand and memorize. And,
therefore, it makes no difference for the learner to stay anywhere either at university
or at home, provided there is device for the virtual laboratory. Once, they are able to
access into the link through internet, they are like they have reached the lab. No
matter, how far and how inconvenience it is for them to travel out, now, people are
more likely to be linked together.
On the other hand, the consideration of the experts is not as narrow as the
communities. From the points of view of the expert, certain aspects need to be added
into the check list too. For example: the safety of the usage of virtual laboratory. This
is, however, easy to make a conclusion. As compared to the physical laboratory,
virtual laboratory certainly have no safety issue to be concerned about. From material
to the apparatus used in the virtual lab, everything existed virtually that would not
cause any direct harm and damage to the human body. It is useful to keep the learners
safe enough to perform a certain risky experiments and handling certain hazardous
substances such as lasers, nuclear tests, toxic chemicals, etc. The value of virtual
laboratory on the contribution of education is accepted by the experts as well.
However, they emphasized that the virtual laboratory should not be taken as a
replacement completely against the real ones, but instead act as an enhancement.
Virtual laboratory do help the experiments to be undergone easily and infinitely, but it
is due to the application of virtual image in replacement with the real one. This
avoided the learners from getting contact with the actual apparatus and material, thus
miss out the hands on experience on the experiment. Hence, experts advise on the
usage of virtual laboratory before one real experiment. It allows learners to get an
initial abstract idea on how the experiment would look like and where the parts would
most likely be doing mistakes. Despite this, the educational benefits of the virtual
laboratory are inevitable. The virtual laboratory is considered a good learning
methodology and user friendly device. It provides convenience for both the learner
and the instructor. It helps the learner to solve and understand complex problem that
generally could not be understood by others. It also helps the instructor a lot in
preparing and managing the experiment for the learners.
Conversely, there are also some facts of negative issue that need to be figured
out and solved. This is such that the learners have to possess a prior knowledge,
basically on the application of ICT, and furthermore the method of accessing this
technology. This includes the knowledge about using computers and the access of
internet into worldwide web (WWW). Those without these knowledges and skills
may have difficulties in utilizing the features and options in virtual laboratory. And
thus, the relative sectors have to work together with the ministry of education to
reorganize and restructure the syllabus of the education now in order to add-in the
computer and ICT knowledge as a major subject. This is especially significant for the
people from rural area who could not possess a proper and sufficient education level
at their school, particularly computer knowledge. Besides, the presence of sufficient
and effective device for the virtual laboratory Base on the principle, computer is

considered the most basic device that one needs to have in order to access online for
any business. As in the modern time today, it is hardly to find any family without a
computer in their home. However, there is always an exception. This does not apply
to the people in rural area as most people in comparison to the urban area have a great
disparity in their financial capability. Not to mention the virtual laboratory, the basic
networking would not be accomplished without a computer. Moreover, virtual
laboratory requires a certain speed of internet that could support its smoothness.
Insufficient speed for the assessment of virtual laboratory would cause the users to be
less possible to get connection with it, especially in remote areas. In short, experts are
making consideration on having changes in rural area, so that there would be no one
being expelled from this facility.
In relative to the safety, experts highlighted the risk of taking the users ethics
and professionalism into challenge. As physical safety could be neglected, the
accuracy and reality of the data presented from the virtual laboratory would be
questioned. This issue is related to the cyber security, where there is no action of
deceive on the data records. However, there is no such thing to keep the users away
from these unethical actions. This is, thus, a challenge to these users to keep their
stands while the situation favours them to obtain a more perfect data. When this came
to a moral testing, there is no guarantee for the people for not committing any
unwanted actions according to our expectation.
In a nutshell, there are indeed both merits and demerits for the invention of
virtual laboratory. However, as the definition of the virtual laboratory stated, it is
provided for the learners from all over the world to demonstrate a transfer of
knowledge from theoretical to practical application. Many sectors are rigorously
assessing virtual laboratory into their field and make use of it to fulfil their
requirements to the maximum. On the other hand, without ignoring the demerits of
the virtual lab, experts are trying their best to make sure that the virtual lab can be
applied at its usefulness without causing too much problems of imbalances and
ineffectiveness on certain community. As a result, the operation in the sectors can be
facilitated to greater aspect, in terms of quantity and quality. Consequently the
productivity of the industry would get to be enhanced.