Online engineering education for manufacturing technology: Is a remote experiment a suitable tool to teach competences for “Working 4.0”?

Abstract The demands of modern industry contexts (so‐called Industry 4.0) are going to reshape the working world of future engineers. It seems obvious that these technological developments will affect higher education institutions with increasing intensity. For years, there has been a vivid discussion on the IT competences, which need to be developed by students in order to face emerging technology changes. To tackle the question regarding industry expectations towards future engineers, in this article a remote laboratory at a German university is analysed to identify potentials for future‐oriented teaching and learning in the light of the required competences for “Working 4.0”. Current scientific studies and industry agendas about Working 4.0 competences are identified, connected learning objectives are derived and the focused remote laboratory is linked to these objectives. As a result, it can be shown that this educational setting has the potential to reflect the complexity of Working 4.0. However, the results also show that the examined laboratory addresses only some of the competences in the context of Industry 4.0. Furthermore, it is argued in how far industry demands serve as the only basis for educational development efforts. The scientific studies and the industry agenda offer a limited and more political perspective on educational development. Nevertheless, based on the research in this article, it can be argued that remote labs (and online labs in general) have the potential to lift traditional laboratory‐based engineering education to a modern engineering education 4.0.