Remote E-Learning for Cyber-Physical Production Systems in Higher Education

The advent of Industry 4.0 has made it crucial to improve the accessibility of higher education and to ensure that the future generation of engineers is able to acquire interdisciplinary competences to face the challenges of the data-driven era, including hands-on experience with real scenarios. We present an approach for teaching Cyber-Physical Production Systems remotely to graduate students, along with a discussion of sample projects, recommendations and the lessons learned in the effort to break down geographical barriers to education, reduce the cost associated with material and mitigate the impact of unforeseen disruptions such as the one caused by the pandemic scenario of COVID-19 in 2020. A combination of physical learning factory demonstrators, digital twin and simulation scenarios was developed to provide students with the resources to remotely implement an end-to-end Cyber-Physical Production System, along with its integration with other key technologies of Industry 4.0. A case study at the NOVA University of Lisbon showed that average attendance improved by 26.6%, retention in lab component improved by 12.9% and lab grades improved on average by 7.33% compared to on-site iterations of the same course in the two previous years.