In science and technical programmes, practical lab experience is essential for high-quality education. With growing student numbers, Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) had to find a way to offer all students sufficient experience.
Two professors have developed a solution that makes practice-oriented education more accessible, flexible and scalable: Remote Labs. Through this online platform, students can conduct experiments remotely with lab setups, in real time and with full control over equipment and data. Remote Labs is not a simulation environment, but a connection to the physical lab.

In this session, we will take you through the development of Remote Labs at TU/e: how we started with a small pilot, and how we are now working towards widespread use within the university and beyond. We will share our experiences of building a technically robust and didactically sound infrastructure. We will address issues surrounding scalability, management and integration of EdTech in education. We will also show how students and teachers use the platform and what added value it provides in terms of flexibility, accessibility and learning outcomes.

In addition, we look ahead: what is needed to make Remote Labs available on a larger scale to other institutions in the Netherlands? How can we work towards a shared, national infrastructure for practice-oriented distance learning? What might that look like, and what could it bring us as science education sector in the Netherlands?

This session is intended for teachers, educational innovators, digitisation policymakers, EdTech developers and anyone involved in hybrid or flexible education in science/technology studies.

In short: a future-oriented story about educational innovation that is scalable not only technically, but also organisationally and didactically.