Abstract:

Germany, like many other developed countries, is currently facing a severe shortage of skilled workers, especially in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) professions. One reason is the demographic shift caused by an aging workforce. According to the federal government, the working-age population will decline by 3.9 million by 2030. In addition, only one-third of all employees in this sector are women, which places Germany at the bottom of the field compared to other European countries. Increasing the participation of women in the labor market can therefore make a positive contribution to securing a skilled workforce. This is also reflected in the field of robotics, making countermeasures to secure skilled workers essential. In this field in particular, the accessibility of learning resources is another barrier to ensuring the training and education of skilled workers. The availability of hardware in higher education institutions severely limits the number of possible learners. Another major problem arose from the Covid-19 pandemic. While the transition to e-learning in various lectures could be accomplished without major problems, the teaching of robotics programming was faced with a major hurdle due to the unavailability of hardware. In view of these problems, the Robotics Department iRAS (Robotics and Autonomous Systems Research Group) of the Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences (HKA) has set itself the task of addressing the three identified problems -
(1) shortage of skilled workers/demographic change,
(2) accessibility of robotics resources and
(3) bringing women/girls closer to robotics - with several research projects focusing on improving the educational situation in robotics, locally, nationally and internationally.

The TOURINGS (Innovative Training Solution for the Installation of Collaborative Robotics in Manufacturing Sectors) project is developing an innovative and interactive training course aimed at manufacturing sectors in the field of collaborative robotics. A collaborative platform is developed by an international consortium and the course is based on interactive learning videos covering different topics related to collaborative robotics. In another project called RoLe4D (Learning Robotics in 4 Dimensions), the existing teaching concepts for robotics at the HKA will be comprehensively further developed in order to significantly increase the practical component and the learning success. This project focuses on the use of interactive learning videos and Extended Reality to make the content remotely accessible to a larger number of students. The Robot Hub Academy project goes one step further and aims to inspire and engage schoolchildren, especially female students, in technical subjects and robotics in particular. Through these projects, HKA is impacting robotics education at almost all levels: students in secondary schools, higher education, and vocational education. In this paper, we present the three projects, their specific goals and expected impacts, as well as their concepts, implementation, and results.

Keywords:

Vocational Education, Higher Education, Robotics, STEM, Immersive learning content, Interactive learning content.