Dear all,

first of all, many thanks to all of you who participated in our survey on the impact of CoViD19 on robotics labs and other forms of hands-on education. The results are now published in an article in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine (RAM), which is Open Access:

A. Birk and D. Simunovic, Robotics Labs and Other Hands-On Teaching During COVID-19: Change Is Here to Stay? in IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, doi:10.1109/MRA.2021.3102979, 2021

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9523602

Among others, there is evidence that there is a potentially long-lasting impact, i.e., that instructors report an expectation of changes to be permanent. Furthermore, a vast majority of the participants reported a switch to online teaching with hands-on elements. This has among others strong consequences for the used equipment, e.g., simulation environments for use at home emerged as the most important tool for hands-on robotics education, while the use of take-home hardware could not substantially profit from the pandemic. Interestingly, there is a also significant discrepancy between the students' performance as perceived by the instructors and the actual grades the students achieved, which are significantly higher than before.

Best regards, Andreas & Dora