virTUos reaches milestone - project ends on 31.12.2025

Project conclusion virTUos - a milestone for digital teaching at TU Dresden

After several intensive years, the virTUos project is coming to an end - and we can look back on a journey that feels like an expedition through new digital landscapes. Every step, every fork in the road and every new space opened up was shaped by our eight sub-projects. Together, they have created an ecosystem that sustainably strengthens hybrid teaching at TU Dresden and rethinks university teaching as a flexible, inclusive and scientifically sound learning space.

We have opened up digital spaces in which learning is not tied to doors, time zones or physical presence. Initial ideas became resilient bridges: between face-to-face and online, between disciplines, between students and lecturers - and between institutions worldwide. At the same time, it became clear how valuable experimental spaces and a progressive culture of error are for reliably establishing innovative teaching.

Our milestones in the project:

Digital Herrnhut
Virtual excursions, hybrid small curricula and the digitalization setup ImagoFolio enabled international cooperation despite distance. Over 70,000 pages of historical manuscripts were made accessible - a new window into the world of digital humanities.

Telepresence
Telepresence robots and a PTZ system helped us to visibly, audibly and effectively involve absent students. Hybrid participation became not only technically possible, but also socially tangible - even in clinically challenging contexts.

HybParc
Sensor technology, video analysis, AI and VR transformed learning parcours into training rooms that support immediate feedback and individual learning paths. A digital training ground that stays.

Hybrid tutoring
Hybrid qualification modules, flipped classroom formats, masterclasses and OER materials professionalized student teaching and support contexts and created standardized, scalable support structures.

Students
Formats such as FüDiKo, the Creative Digital Workshop and extensive OER created a breeding ground for student digital skills. The "students as partners" approach showed that genuine participation is a key success factor for accepted and relevant digital teaching.

Exdimed
Low-threshold OER self-learning materials taught programming and data skills - a springboard for research in the humanities and social sciences in the digital space.

Hybrid internship
A mass internship was turned into a flexible blended learning format with Arduino cases, theme days and flipped classroom elements. Practical, motivating and permanently anchored.

DikoLint
An "international classroom without borders": COIL-based collaborative online learning, tele-tutorials and virtual mobility created cross-location, interdisciplinary learning spaces and strengthened digital collaboration - closely interlinked with Digital Herrnhut.

What remains?
Numerous results are now firmly anchored in teaching: hybrid curricula, VR modules, OER collections, telepresence concepts, training stations, digitalization workflows and qualification formats. They continue to have an impact - in degree programs, in MITZ, on twillo and Zenodo, in the MKNetwork and in international cooperation.

virTUos has also shown that interdisciplinary cooperation - across faculties, the ZiLL, the SLUB, the DIU and numerous external partners - is a key driver of successful digital transformation. The resulting perspectives point beyond the project and formulate an orientation for a university that wants to learn, teach and live in a more flexible, inclusive and networked way. virTUos has made it clear that when digitalization is not an end in itself, but a tool, not only is new teaching created - new common practice emerges.

A big thank you to all employees, students and partners - and to the Foundation for Innovation in University Teaching, which made this project possible.