Best practices on e-learning in VET

After successful phrase of conducting interviews with VET teachers, trainers and educators (we finally managed to collect data from 31 interviews), we started searching for good practices on e-learning in VET sector in each partners country. Our main assumption was to collect good specific experiences/real practices in e-learning. We agreed on using the following criteria in our desk research:

  • good practice has to promote interactions in learning community (teachers-learnes and learners-learners),
  • Content created should be multimedial and interactive,
  • variety of learning methods should be used for supporting individual and group work,
  • various assessment strategies, tools and assignments are used for learning result evaluation,
  • social software (web 2.0 tools) is used as a learning environment,
  • good if actors involved in desribed practice use open source/ free software that is also accessible.
According to above criteria each partner searched for 2-3 examples of good practices in their national environment. In total about 15 examples from different VET sectors were chosen e.g. bussines communication, health care, agriculture, foresty and fishing, confectionery and bakery, mechanics, tourism, etc. While describing a practice we focused on generall assumptions, tools used, pedagogical view and reasons why this practice is importnat in the context of our project. Before the final report from our reserach in WP1 we would like to share three examples focused on VET.
In Slovenia there is project about bussines communication where in acordance with standard classification of activites the students can type of activite, for example: selling cars, football school, perfumery, etc. They have to prepare a catalogue of products or services which contains picture of product, code of product, mesurement unit, price without VAT. They have to write an offer, and together with the catalog send it by e-mail, to classmates from other groups. The classmates submite an order. Afterwards group issues an invoice which encompasses extensive excel knowledge.

Second example is from Poland. It is a Confectionery and bakery online courses on Moodle. The courses are free and designed first of all for young people, who learn in vocational schools. Students can take courses after having class in school to test or improve knowledge on the subject. It proves that:

  • Students readily work in project in which new technology are involved
  • Students learn from teacher, but teacher learns from and with students as well
  • Collaboration is important in VET sector and it works
  • Teacher do not need money to start adventure with TEL in VET (all tools are free).
  • It is also important, because it concerns very young people, who see each other almost every day at school. Even so, they still want to work online on data and make tests = using technology is natural for them.

The third example in E-medica project – Connecting secondary medical schools via videoconferencing taking place in Croatia in collaboration with Slovenia and Macedonia. . E-medica is a project connecting 26 secondary medical schools to each other as well as hospitals in Croatia and abroad via videoconferencing. Using videoconferencing rooms established through the project in the participating schools, as well as webconferencing tools, the students and their teachers can participate in distant lectures by medical experts working in Croatian but also international hospitals, as well as participate in live surgeries and medical procedures, with commentary from the surgeons on the procedure progress (making it a teaching clinic for secondary school students and enabling them to learn first hand, something they would never be able to do in this way without the help of ICT). In addition to videoconferencing, students participate in student exchanges and collaborate online on projects dealing with medical issues.

The collected best practices together with data from interviews will be used for idetyfing the learning needs and defining new objective for online course. Practices will be also used for course localisation.


Photo used in this post: Flickr by Andy CC BY-SA 

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