Collaborative Sustainability Strategies for Online Laboratories

Abstract

This chapter describes a wide range of issues relating to the collaborative aspects of sustaining an online laboratory at both a local and a strategic level. The discussion focuses on the benefits that the key stakeholders can obtain through collaboration, methods for establishing and sustaining collaborations, and the ways in which collaboration can enhance didactics. Current trends and future opportunities for amateur, research, and industry-driven online laboratories are also discussed. The chapter concludes with three case studies which illustrate the recent past, the state-of-the-art and the imminent future of online laboratory learning, and the ways by which progress towards a sustainable infrastructure can be made in a complex and culturally diverse world. It is advocated that the online laboratory community should move beyond a narrow peer-to-peer approach and engage increasingly with the full range of stakeholders.