The new developed type of laboratory is designed as a live stream with live interacting students from home. With the Laboratory on Demand online tutorials are filmed, cut, synchronized and subtitled to be uploaded and shared in the in IO1 developed database. students got familiar with the basics of joining processes and are ready to attend the live laboratory. Students are asked to suggest the welding parameters and the main lecturer demonstrates the welding and discusses visible correlations, failures and general weld seam appearances with the students. He emphasizes certain phenomena of welding such as arc type or formation of silicon nitride, sparks etc. The main aim of this laboratory with a total working hour of 10 is to evaluate meaningful parameters together with the students and demonstrate the result of those parameters. To do so, each semester other/new parameters will be used to produce welds for the live discussion, so in a given circle of 3 semesters the laboratories stay unique. The live discussion part is moderated by the assistant lecturer. Having the dialogue with students is the essential part of these laboratories. The main lecturer asks questions, explains and discusses the results. The assistant lecturer keeps the overview and moderates the session while the main lecturer can focus in the teaching content. The Laboratory is successfully passed when students upload their new developed protocols and pass an online test in addition. Before the PRAMECO project, the laboratory sessions consisted of only one demonstration per topic. Because of the limited view, often due to the large number of students, the teaching successes were limited. interactivity was not planned in the previous laboratories. Due to a lack of capacity and time, a practical component could only be offered for one topic of joining technology. This practical component included half a laboratory unit on MMA welding. The newly developed laboratory event is now consists of three major pillars which can be seen as stages of the whole laboratory event. These are “Self-study”, ”Demonstration” and “practice”. Each stage is gated with an online test to query the knowledge of the students. Without passing the given tests, students can’t move on to the next stage of the laboratory. This is to ensure that the teaching success is maximized by already consolidated basic knowledge. The teaching staff can thus go into more depth and detail on the teaching content without having to repeat the necessary basic knowledge from the previous stage.

Each test on the end of a Stage can be attended twice. This way, if a student fails the test, they can retake it another time. If the second attempt also fails, the lab is considered failed and the student must repeat it completely. The following figure shows the three stages and their content.

The first stage called “self-study” contains the laboratory on demand database. It offers students the opportunity to acquire the necessary theoretical knowledge in self-study and at their own chosen pace. Prior to the Laboratory events of every teached topic of welding and cutting students are given documents and the video database to learn the basics behind certain joining technologies. The Videos in that database cover only the basics. How the equipment works, what equipment is needed and how the parameters are set. The Laboratory on Demand database gives examples of how certain joining technologies are applied. The video Database is kept simple and basic so students aren’t overwhelmed by the density of provided information’s. In addition to that, this reduces the risk of creating duplications in the laboratory. In order to improve the overall quality of the course, this stage of the lab addressed the requests of the students, who wanted less repetition across the different lab sessions. The maximum length of provided videos is at about 5 minutes each. Students can decide when and where to watch the videos without having to spend a lot of time on them. The second stage of the laboratory event is now called the “Demonstration”. This stage now shows the students examples of the joining processes. The theoretical knowledge built up in the first stage is now expanded through application examples and demonstrations. Here the students gather together online to attend the digital live laboratory. These event are real time streamed labs. They are conducted by at least two staff members and recorded via the newly developed streaming and filming workstation. The live digital labs rely on a degree of student interactivity. unlike traditional labs, students now have the chance to ask questions at any time and influence the course of the lab to some extent. Depending on the students' willingness to interact, these digital live labs are thus either co-designed by the students or guided by the lab staff. The students are asked to explore a certain parameter range, to think about the interactions of the parameters and to question the welds of their chosen

parameters shown afterwards. For introverted, non-interactive groups of students, this task is to some extent guided by the lab staff. This reaction to different groups of students thus prevents idle time. The laboratory flow and the accompanying teaching effect are thus ensured, regardless of the student types. At the end of the second stage labs, students take another exam. As at the end of the first stage, students have two attempts and cannot progress to the next laboratory stage without passing the exam. The third practice stage is still an on-site event. Since welding is a craft where the feeling for the material is essential, a practical phase is also provided for the optimal teaching effect. Completely digitizing the laboratory is possible in pandemic cases, but practical experience in welding is extremely important. in this stage, students are divided into groups. The groups consist of about 10 - 15 students so that the laboratory staff can pay sufficient attention to each student. The practical stage is designed to build and consolidate manual skills. The students receive a safety briefing and instruction on the machines and how to use them. The primary aim is to apply what they have learned in the last two stages and to experience it in a practical test. In these laboratory sessions, the two most common welding processes are made available for practice. These are MMA and MSG welding. Due to the knowledge built up in the last two stages, the practical part for the students could be significantly increased. The new stage model of the PRAMECO laboratory at HAW makes it possible to share knowledge in a targeted manner without, as was previously the case, having to include all (the necessary theoretical knowledge, demonstrations and any practical experience) in one laboratory unit. At the end of the third stage, students take a final online test. This concludes the laboratory event.

The new lab setup and the minimum hardware requirements to run the new HAW lab are explained in more detail on the framework conditions page.