Zurich University of Applied Sciences is a campus-based university with high quality presence education in bachelor, master and continuous education programmes. There are situations in which no presence is possible – most recently involuntarily invoked by the COVID situation – where smart digital solutions help with educational procedures in online or hybrid teaching modalities. Additionally, there are also situations in which such solutions might be helpful as a general complement to all teaching modalities including presence. Eventually, the goal is to ensure highly qualified alumni to boost the local economy and to fill the pipeline of next-generation researchers. A lot of the public debate has been on lectures alone. In this blog post, recent progress on digitally supported labs and examination is being summarised, demonstrating that Zurich University of Applied Sciences is also active on the solution side with novel science-based tool, service and solution designs. We are looking forward to colleagues from other institutions to discuss and advance these solutions further with us.