Jumpstart into AI for Engineers – on the way to become virtual

Abstract

The profile of engineers must also include digital technologies in order to be adequately trained for the future. With the help of an active and collaborative learning experience, students’ motivation and involvement could be increased. Originally, interactive workshops were created as a pop-up makerspace and built on constructivism learning theory. The virtual teaching sessions caused by the pandemic forced the change of proven onsite teaching formats. The question is how to transform an interactive onsite teaching format for university students into an online format, keep the teaching quality constant with low additional technical effort and with a strong activation of the students. Using the example of a workshop on Artificial Intelligence, this transformation is described. The first results show that the workshop is well accepted by the students and, according to their own statements, a quick learning success is achieved. The assessment is carried out by using standardized questionnaires.