Weblabs in Chemical Engineering Education

The idea for this paper resulted from a workshop on the use of remotely operated experiments (weblabs) in chemical engineering education held in Cambridge, UK, in July 2005 (http://como.cheng.cam.ac.uk/conf.workshop.html). At the workshop people using weblabs met to discuss experiences and different approaches on how to make the most out of remote experiments in undergraduate chemical engineering teaching.We describe the technology involved in making educational experiments available on the internet and how they are motivated and used in teaching at MIT, the University of Cambridge and the University of Leipzig. Experiences are discussed and we give our view of the strengths and weaknesses of weblabs in chemical engineering education.