DigI-VET - Fostering Digitisation and Industry 4.0 in vocational education and training

In recent years, digitalization has become increasingly important and has thus gained in significance. At the same time, there has been a trend towards mobile learning or m-learning. The Erasmus+ project DigI-VET - “Fostering Digitization and Industry 4.0 in vocational education and training” focuses on new and innovative ways of learning and teaching in times of digitization and Industry 4.0. 

The partner consortium creates awareness of the need to consider and actively promote digitization and Industry 4.0 in the context of vocational education and training (VET). The development of a corresponding curriculum as well as teaching and learning materials for digitalization are core aspects of the project. This goes hand in hand with the design of an innovative sMOOC for teachers and learners in the field of vocational education and training, in which the most important aspects of this current topic are presented and taught. 

In DigI-VET, the DigI-VET book will also be designed and implemented to address a broad audience. Readers will learn about the foreseeable developments and challenges in the current and future world of work, how digitalization will influence them and what significance this will have for vocational education and training and teachers and providers in the field of vocational education and training. The aim is to develop and evaluate Digital Competence Profiles for VET. 

To provide direct impressions of digitalization and Industry 4.0, the project offers an online platform where best practices and showcases are presented, providing insights into companies and firms, their current use and handling of digitalization and their future expectations. This site also provides teaching and learning materials and examples with texts, audios, videos and photos, bringing Industry 4.0 directly into the classroom. Current Industry 4.0 approaches focus primarily on a symbiosis between production and new IT technologies in order to improve industrial processes and collect adequate data. In this sense, digitalization is a key to be able to deal with these approaches. However, this does not only mean changes in industry and production, but also opportunities and challenges in the field of vocational training. 

Digitalization and Industry 4.0 are often understood as the fourth industrial revolution. Such an approach focuses on product digitalization in the sense of end-to-end digitalization. This also includes the expansion and redesign of existing products, but also requirements in terms of new skills needed. For VET teachers, the main challenge here is to find and compile information on a rapidly changing environment, in the sense of the world of work and life, and to find appropriate ways to convey this new knowledge and information to learners. Therefore, DigI-VET also focuses on the design of an acceptance study in the partner countries in order to gain a European perspective on the acceptance, experiences, problems and opportunities in the areas of digitalization and Industry 4.0. 

The target group is teachers, learners and vocational trainers. The survey examines how these VET target groups view digitalization and Industry 4.0 and how they incorporate this into their teaching. In addition, the survey also looks at the challenges of Industry 4.0 in VET and in VET environments. Information is collected on the extent to which the development of a digital economy influences learning and teaching. As part of additional research, the partners also compile information on mobile learning, taking into account both their national and European contexts. 

The DigI-VET partners are producing the DigI-VET book on digitalization and Industry 4.0 issues and their impact on VET in English. The book will present the survey results and the experiences from the additional research and offer additional checklists and tips for teachers and trainers in vocational education and training. The DigI-VET project is designed according to a previous partnership within the framework of a project under the Leonardo II programme and includes two main intellectual outputs dedicated to quantitative and qualitative research and investigation on the topic of digitalization and Industry 4.0 as well as the development and design of the DigI-VET book. A number of tasks relating to the coordination of the various approaches and data will be carried out in the three partner meetings. 

The results of the survey will not only be presented to a broad public in the book, but also together with the best practice presentations and the DigI-VET sMOOC at multiplier events. DigI-VET shows the innovative IT and working world and offers it for vocational training contexts. The curriculum can help teachers to incorporate these new challenges into their daily teaching.