Connecting Conceptual Knowledge with Real-World through annotated glossaries and simulators: ComLAB case of study

Abstract

Virtual laboratories have enhanced technical education by improving academic performance, increasing skill competency acquisition, using techniques that would otherwise be risky without any danger and higher learning motivation in students across any practical discipline, including medical studies, sciences, and overall technical and engineering studies. ComLab is a continuously evolving virtual telecommunications laboratory environment, integrated into the multidisciplinary GlossaLAB platform. Its purpose is to exemplify the connection of knowledge from the highest levels of abstraction and generality to practical application. ComLab is embedded within the GlossaLAB platform and the projects developed on it. The aim of ComLab is not to compete as the most futuristic simulator, but rather to provide a reconfigurable and editable simulation of the complete block chain of a communication system, connected to a knowledge system that fosters the understanding of theoretical concepts and their interrelations. GlossaLAB.dixt and CLINFO-CM projects, among their multiple objectives, contribute to ComLab elements such as the enhancement of the semantic annotation schema, conceptual clarification, and the use of plain language to improve comprehension and promote the universalisation of learning. This is achieved through autonomously managed interdisciplinary glossaries, organised into collections, while also providing a minimal semantic annotation layer for the initial theoretical and metatheoretical objectives