Background The European Commission is promoting various initiatives within the scope of digital strategy. It aims at several focused areas such as increasing training in digital skills, modernising education across the EU, and harnessing digital technologies for learning. From the educational perspective, teaching engineering-related topics, such as robotics and automation, often requires access to a lab environment where many resources can be used, demonstrated, and tested. However, the current COVID-19 pandemic has forced more than 1.5 billion students to stay home and access teaching and education through the internet and other digital resources. Although the transition to online can be done without many issues for teaching theoretical classes, the current e-learning tools, such as Zoom and Teams, are not sufficient to replace practical classes and direct experience in real labs. Some online platforms provide engineering tools, for example, Autodesk TinkerCAD for 3D and circuit design, but they do not represent an immersive physical engineering lab, and the contents on many subjects are missing, e.g. robot control and automation. Objectives VirLaDEE aims at giving access to physical engineering labs through their digital twins that will be available in an innovative online platform. These virtual lab facilities will provide a playground that is complementary to the existing learning methods delivering quality and inclusive engineering education through state-of-the-art virtual technologies. Participants The transnational consortium has been established in line with the project objectives and with a sustainable approach, in order to maintain and exploit results and outcomes after the lifetime of the project. The consortium is a multi-disciplinary partnership which comprises three partners from three countries: University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Denmark SDU Technology Entrepreneurship and Innovation (TEI) section has research and education considering various phases of the innovation process, and it extends the traditional view by considering the boundary-crossing and interdisciplinary nature of innovation from Engineering to Business. Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech), Estonia TalTech's Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (DMIE) deals with product development, production engineering, industrial engineering and management, transportation engineering and logistics, materials science, metal processing and technology of other engineering materials. Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche – STIIMA (CNR-STIIMA), Italy. CNR-STIIMA is a promoter of industrial innovation, performs strategic activities of Scientific Research and Technological Development for the Competitiveness and Sustainability of Italian and European Manufacturing Industries. Activities All partners will collaborate and take part in 15 main activities under four main outputs: O1. Analysis of the Physical Labs O2. Development of the Courses and Workshops O3. Development of the Virtual Labs O4. Framework and Guidelines for the Development and Implementation of Virtual Labs All partners will also actively participate in the multiplier event organised by the lead partner at SDU Sønderborg campus. Methodology The project will be carried out with three specific use cases based on three respective labs at SDU, TalTech and CNR-STIIMA. Different methods will be applied including semi-structured interviews, joint workshops, pilot courses, and prototype development and testing. Students and lab stakeholders will be involved in the different activities in the project. Results and findings will be published via open access documents. Results and impact We expect that the virtual labs, different from the existing digital teaching tools, overcome the limitations of online teaching activities since students and teachers have no access to the physical lab resources. The virtual labs represent the digital counterpart of lab facilities and make them available for remote and multi-user access. This will create value in education and international collaboration both during and after the pandemic. We expect to achieve the following results: 1. Understanding of the values of both physical labs and virtual labs in engineering education 2. Higher experience of teachers, researcher and tutors for better exploitation of virtual labs, not only for online teaching 3. Identification of enablers that will ensure the successful online teaching of engineering topics 4. Demos of virtual labs that represents the concept of the physical labs 5. Guidelines to support the development of the virtual labs for engineering education After the project period, we plan to exploit the prototype of the virtual labs, which will be connected as a sharing platform for all partners. The effort will further enhance international collaboration since students and teachers from different countries can meet in the virtual environment at any time from anywhere.
VirLaDEE aimed at giving access to physical engineering labs through their digital twins that are available in an innovative online platform. These virtual lab facilities provide a playground that is complementary to the existing learning methods delivering quality and inclusive engineering education through state-of-the-art virtual technologies. The project aimed at developing virtualized lab solutions and studying the implications of using them in engineering education.
From the educational perspective, teaching engineering-related topics, such as robotics and automation, often requires access to a lab environment where many resources can be used, demonstrated, and tested. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced more than 1.5 billion students to stay home and access teaching and education through the internet and other digital resources. Although the transition to online can be done without many issues for teaching theoretical classes, the current e-learning tools, such as Zoom and Teams, are not sufficient to replace practical classes and direct experience in real labs. Some online platforms provide engineering tools, for example, Autodesk TinkerCAD for 3D and circuit design, but they do not represent an immersive physical engineering lab, and the contents on many subjects are missing, e.g. robot control and automation. This need was addressed by the VirLaDEE project in investigating the potential of virtual labs in engineering education and developing such labs to establish empirical data and experience that are processed in guidelines and recommendations.