Implementation of laboratory practices in the virtual education of the Electronic Engineering and Telecommunications Engineering programs

Virtual education currently allows millions of people to be trained in different areas of knowledge, for this reason, the Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia - UNAD has responded to this reality and at the present time, it offers all its programs in the virtual mode. Training in engineering programs has raised questions about the way in which laboratory practices, a vital part of the engineer's teaching-learning process, should be performed. In this investigation, we carried out a specific study on the programs of Electronic Engineering and Telecommunications Engineering, oriented in virtual modality and on the integration of the laboratory practices in a specific disciplinary course that is common to both engineerings. This article presents laboratory modalities in UNAD methodological courses, a proposal on how to implement laboratory modalities in virtual education and the importance of articulating the two modalities (On-site and simulated), with the competences proposed in a methodological course of the Electronic Engineering and Telecommunications Engineering programs. In the light of the results that were obtained, in which 87% of teachers and 79% of students stated that both modalities should be implemented simultaneously, it is concluded that there is a complementarity between them. This conclusion is reinforced by the fact that the students who developed the two modalities of laboratory practices, obtained a satisfactory performance in the final test where the competences of the course were put at stake.