According to a UN report from 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused the largest disruption to education systems in history, affecting nearly 1.6 billion students in more than 190 countries and on every continent. Experiential learning, which is one of the most important elements of vocational education and training, has become largely unattainable following the mandatory change in the way we work. The pandemic has exposed weaknesses in VET systems, including low levels of digitalization and long-standing structural weaknesses. Workplace disruptions have made it difficult to implement apprenticeship programmes and work-based learning models, which are key elements of a functional and market-responsive technical and vocational education. To help vocational schools tackle this situation, our team decided to develop a project “Digitalising VET: The Flipped Work-Based Learning” (Flipped VET; project no: 2021-1-LV01-KA220-VET-000025117) to support vocational education providers to improve and advance their courses through the use of a flipped work-based learning model. According to the literature, vocational schools in the IT sector show better adoption of flipped work-based learning than others. For this reason, this project aims to eliminate the challenges faced by non-IT vocational schools in digitalizing their services. In this respect, the project results will increase the capacity of vocational schools with the necessary competences to digitalize their services and learn by doing.

Objectives of the project:

This project Flipped VET aims to support VET institutions and VET providers in order to improve and shift work experience courses via using a flipped work-based learning model. This project is not focusing on the specific sector. Since there are already many flipped classrooms in different sector such as steam education, textile, biology, cooking. However, in the pandemic era, the gap between the application of the model and current VETs curriculums are highlighting that non-IT VET providers need a tailored work-based learning with flipped classroom approach.

Main project outputs:

Result 1: The Flipped Work-based Learning Curriculum: Digitalization of the Work-based Learning (How to design The Flipped Work-based Learning). This curriculum is a tool to enable work-based learning to be implemented in a digital environment. It will provide information on how to design flipped work-based learning.

Result 2: The Flipped Work-based Learning Guide, Training Materials for VET Providers, and Online Toolkit for the Flipped Work-based Learning. This outcome aims to support vocational training providers during the digitalization process by providing them with a guidance and supporting training materials.

Result 3: Digitization of VET: Self-learning platform. This platform provides a complete and coherent environment that includes all the results produced by the project and presents them to the public.