'iLabs' offer a new way to add science experiments to online education - Bjorn Carey, Stanford

The virtual labs are Hesselink's latest effort to bring advanced laboratories to the masses online, an approach he pioneered in 1996. That first version included several then-new features, such as remote control and scheduling of the lab, chat, faculty support and an electronic notebook. The most recent "lab in a box" generation of iLabs involved automated hardware that students could access through the Internet and control remotely from anywhere in the world. The labs took up only a few cubic feet of space, which significantly lowered operating costs compared to traditional setups. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/december/lab-ina-box-120613.html