Abstract:

As part of the DAAD-funded "digiPHOTON" project, we have taken on the task of making the content of the "Master of Photonics" course accessible to online students. Since most of our online students are participants who are only temporarily prevented from attending in person due to external influences, we are interested in flexible and sustainable solutions. While the digitization of an ordinary lecture seems technically simple, a demanding challenge for us were modules with practical content and laboratory experiments. Together with the Open Photonics Makerspace "Lichtwerkstatt" we developed and applied our Lab Buddy System in winter semester 21/22 and 22/23.

Our Lab Buddy System is a multi-camera conference system that enables a team of two onsite students and one online student to work together in the lab. The system essentially consists of a zoom meeting equipped with a collection of cameras (PiCam), offering various perspectives on the experimental setup. A hands-free device for audio interaction regardless of the number of people in the lab is included. Each individual PiCam automatically connects itself as a participant to the Zoom meeting. In this way, the Lab Buddy system can be used very flexibly with a variable number of cameras, adapted to the respective experiments. This approach allowed us to let the online students benefit from this learning content as well, while at the same time promoting the integration of the online students into our student community, despite representing only a small part. Teamwork was emphasized here in a way that the on-site students could be the extended arms of the online student. At the same time, the acquired knowledge of the whole team was used to create a joint analysis in the form of a report.

Our system was put to the test using a qualitative survey. In this contribution we will focus on our operating experience, necessary considerations when implementing such a concept and needed management to make it successful. Here we also want to look at how changes to the system, made after the initial evaluation by the students in winter semester 21/22, have affected the learning experience one year later.

Keywords:

Hybrid teaching, online learning, buddy system, face-to-face, STEM, practical training, labs.