The Festo Lernzentrum Saar celebrated its 25^th anniversary with the inauguration of the new learning factory today. In this context, the director of the E&I institute, Prof. Nikolaus Franke, gave a keynote speech on social online learning. Further guests were Mr. Tobias Hans, prime minister of Saarland, members of the shareholder family Stoll as well as further guests of honour from politics, business and academia.

The Festo Group is an important and long-standing partner of the E&I Institute. In the last years, E&I and Festo partnered in a project to research Social Online Learning, i.e., the introduction of elements such as chatrooms and group projects into conventional online courses to increase participation and reduce drop-out-rates. Earlier this year, the E&I Institute and Festo Didactic launched a new project on New Learning Technologies. As part of this project, more than 20 E&I students are currently working on projects to support the company’s introduction of technologies such as virtual reality in technical education.