Aalborg Universitet Transforming Pbl Through Hybrid Learning Info
For universities clinging to pure physical PBL out of fear, AAU offers a challenge: the future of work is hybrid. If your students cannot learn to solve complex problems in a hybrid team, you have not prepared them for the real world. But if you adopt AAU’s principles, you will not just transform PBL. You will future-proof it. This article is based on published reports from Aalborg Universitet’s PBL Lab (2024-2025) and interviews with faculty from the Department of Planning and the Technical Faculty of IT and Design.
For decades, Aalborg Universitet (AAU) in Denmark has been a global benchmark for Problem-Based Learning (PBL) . Unlike traditional universities that start with theory and end with application, AAU’s model flips the script: students spend each semester tackling a real-world, complex problem in small, self-directed teams. Aalborg Universitet Transforming PBL Through Hybrid Learning
| Metric | Traditional Physical PBL | Hybrid PBL (AAU Model) | |--------|------------------------|------------------------| | Student satisfaction (collaboration) | 88% | 84% | | Supervisor ability to assess individual contribution | 72% | 79% | | Team project completion rate | 91% | 93% | | Student preference for next semester | 76% physical-only | 62% hybrid or mixed | For universities clinging to pure physical PBL out
But as education moves into a post-pandemic, digitally saturated world, even the best pedagogical models face a challenge: You will future-proof it


Hi, thank you very much for sharing your modifications and experiences!
I also have a Fabtotum, bought used on ebay and I slowly trying to understand this machine by the time. Actually I try to mount an Touchscreen to the raspberry, according to this hints:
https://github.com/Opentotum/Opentotum/wiki/adding-touchscreen-fab
Unfortunally, I have no idia how to “modifying the custom image”. I probably still have an understanding problem of the infrastructure from the fabtotum… I thought, that these commands can be sent via putty (SSH), but it is not working this way… Do you have me a hint, that would be great!
Thanks, best regards, Johannes.
Hi Johannes,
the Fabtotum has two brains: The Totumduino board, holding an 8-bit Arduino-like MCU running a modified Marlin firmware for actual printer control, and a Raspberry Pi, which is responsible for the Web-Interface, some monitoring tasks etc. The instructions in the link you mention are directed against the Raspberry Pi, and yes, you should be able to log in to the Raspberry via SSH/Putty. Can you be a bit more clear where your problem starts? Can’t you reach the Fabtotum via SSH? can’t you log in? Don’t the commands work? What error messages do you get?
Btw.: There is a Facebook Fabtotum Users Group which is rather helpful!
– Hauke
Hello love the idea but actually my frienda fab totum is with another problem the hotend ribbon cable is not working could u help me if u know where can i get a new one? When thr machine turns on not all the lights get green and we are trying to figure it out
Hi Rodrigo,
I recommend that you connect with the Facebook Fabtotum Group – there’s one guy selling ribbon cables. Not the original ones, but working replacements.
All the best!
Hauke
hi,
is your fabtotum running 2 belts or one ? i’ve got mine with disassembled carriage but it had one continues belt on it. From all the cad files and photos online it seems that it runs 2 belts. Do you have a photo of head carriage “opened” by chance ? would help me a lot 🙂 thanks
I *think* it is one belt, but admittedly I am not 100% sure. It’s the standard Indiegogo-Campaign version. To mod my printing head it was not necessary to dismantle the head carrier, so I cannot share any photos. However, if you’re on Facebook, join the Fabtotum users group – there you will likely find someone who can help here.
thanks, it should be 2 belts, but seems like they managed to route it continuously in the carriage and just anchor 4 points of it. maybe it saved some time during production (?), but that caused a bit of “extra” belt inside the carriage – not the nicest solution, but in the other hand fabtotum is full of parts attached by glue, strange + hard to access bolts etc. the only thing they did right was non-crossing corexy idea (not implementation), imho
The initial Indiegogo version indeed has many design flaws, I’d agree. Supposedly, the second generation was a bit better. And while I agree with you, I’d still say that Fabtotum is a decent printer, and in some regards it was ahead of its time. I’ve a second 3D machine by now, but in terms of user interface, the web interface of Fabtotum is much more advanced than what others do. Something I’d recommend to keep an eye on is the E3D toolchanger platform. They adopted the CoreXY system, and it looks *really* promising. And E3D does things right, when they do it!
i know e3d and the toolchanger. cool stuff and it’s nice of them to give a credit to the fabtotum (in one of the blog posts, i believe) as toolchanger is using same corexy non-crossing idea.
I would recommend you to check another cool toolchanger – https://jubilee3d.com/, if you’re not familiar.
And while talking about fabtotum GUI – if you’re ditching all the rest of the tools and using it as dumb 3dprinter – klipper firwmare is kind of compatible (im working on it now) with it and arguably better than marlin or reprap. It’s well praised by Voron community, another great 3d printing project.