Flexible Skills Lab Architecture

"Flexible Skills Lab Architecture" (FLEXLAB) is a "space lab for space labs" and provides an environment for the design and model testing and evaluation of intelligent, hybrid learning environments consisting of analog and digital components. Through modular infrastructure and furnishings as well as technical tools to support design, room labs can be designed and tested here. Only after successful evaluation of the design variants are optimized solutions exported and installed in the designated learning spaces (skills labs). In this way, incorrect planning is avoided, resources are conserved and sustainable solutions are generated.

Students of human medicine and health sciences complete several practice units in so-called skills labs during their studies in order to prepare themselves practically for their future professional life. The aim of this skills training is to learn and consolidate very different competencies, including psychomotor skills for manual or manual-technical actions (e.g. movement exercises, physical examinations, injections, wound care) to skills for decision-making and action in complex situations. Depending on the course of study and the particular exercise, the architecture of the room, the furnishings, the equipment, the media-technological equipment, and the ambient design must meet various requirements.

The design of such spaces is complex and requires, for example, the reconstruction of walls, the replacement of furniture, the installation of simulation mannequins, the installation of displays, sensors, and actuators, etc. In addition, depending on the teaching module, constantly changing boundary conditions apply in the Skills Labs during the course of the week, necessitating spontaneous redesign as quickly as possible. A room lab for skills labs is therefore ideally not a static room with fixed equipment, but a polymorphous construct with flexible adaptability. This is a particularly necessary criterion because students are expected to use the skills labs independently, even without guidance. Since this use can also take place simultaneously between participants on site and online via videoconferencing, appropriate architectural support for the placement of suitable videoconferencing equipment is particularly necessary, which on the one hand enables observation of the processes on site and on the other hand enables collaborative hybrid handling of data and experimental setups.