It is obvious that our society needs more engineers. It is also true that mankind must live in symbiosis with nature and focus on sustainability and understanding. Thus, engineers must be able to design products and services which are in line with the principles of nature and the only way to become familiar with these principles is to perform many physical experiments. A way to use instructional laboratories more effectively and offer more hours in the laboratories for students without significant increased cost per student is opening them for remote access. Hands-on experiments are indispensable but remote mouse-cursor-on ones can supplement them. The VISIR (Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality) Open Laboratory Platform offers an open standard for online workbenches enabling students not only to perform physical experiments 24/7 but also to practice laboratory work. Learning objectives of laboratory work, free access to laboratory resources, and individual assessment of such work should be important key elements in an education delivering engineers with a solid documented laboratory experience.