The fundamentals of electrical engineering are well established and the knowledge is taught in courses on basic electrical engineering around the world. Nevertheless in a modern teaching environment many established concepts are challenged. In particular the Covid-19 pandemic triggered massive changes all around the world and accelerated the development of off-side education. On this account the combination of virtual, remote and in person elements is a promising approach to modernise existing laboratory courses and improve the engagement of the students. However the introduction of such elements faces challenges from different directions which are discussed in this work.

In this work an interactive 2D virtual laboratory for basic electrical engineering based on the Java graphical user interface framework JavaFX is presented. The software is optimized to overcome the entry barriers of the laboratory environment. Therefore the focus is set on the virtualization of frequently used laboratory instruments as interactively and realistically as possible and teaching students how to use them. The content includes generally required skills and concepts like handling oscilloscopes, function generators, different multimeters and passive components as part of measurements in DC and AC circuits. Many different modes of the virtual lab, some including gamification elements, are designed to appeal to students with different levels of knowledge, practical experience and learning styles. Besides four completely virtual experiments from a real laboratory at the authors university, the program offers interactive tutorials for instruments, virtual colloquia, videos and a sandbox mode, where the user has no boundaries for instrument operation. The virtual laboratory was distributed as executable application for all students attending a practical course for basic electrical engineering at the authors university. A subsequent evaluation revealed that the usability of the program and the influence on targeted skills in the laboratory course is largely rated as positive and it fulfills the desired purpose of simplifying the entry into laboratory work.

A remote laboratory for electrical engineering with a high variety of circuits and realistic operation of instruments is presented in this paper. Using only 20 passive elements and eight laboratory instruments the user can build more than 2,000 different circuits and conduct realistic measurements. A single application based on the .NET framework with a graphical user interface designed via Windows Presentation Foundation is responsible for the communication with the hardware as well as interactions with the user. The user is taught how to operate the instruments, including device-specific menu navigation, in a realistic manner. The software also prevents the operator from causing damage to the equipment by overvoltages or high currents. This is ensured by empirically determined operational boundaries as well as parallel electronic simulations of the built circuits to identify critical and damaging errors. Tests with small user groups in a period of approximately one semester have shown that the remote laboratories can be operated safely without serious errors in software and hardware. The all-in-one software for all laboratory processes as well as low latency are beneficial to the user experience. On this account a broader use for hybrid lessons in basic electrical engineering is planned in the future.