The demands of the world of work and the labour market are constantly changing and in the context of contemporary challenges like digitalisation, individualisation and internationalisation, the skills and qualifications that are expected of VET graduates are constantly changing as well. VET providers have to face these challenges, but it seems that as soon as they have gathered enough relevant data and are ready to adapt their VET programmes accordingly, the world outside the VET institutions has already evolved again. It is like a race the VET providers may never win due to their mere nature as educational institutions. This challenge of skill gaps has been addressed by the European Commission increasingly and in alignment with the objectives defined by the ET2020 Strategic Framework, the EQUAVET recommendations, and especially by the Riga Conclusions, the main priority of the DITOGA project is to enhance the quality and sustainability of vocational and educational training (VET) programmes across Europe in order to provide VET learners with a modern, comprehensive, and resilient skill set. By establishing continuous feedback loops on personal level with VET graduates using digital technology, new sets of meaningful qualitative and quantitative data are generated and used complementary to existing data pools which allow VET providers to increase their performance and efficiency in a progressive way. In virtue of making the DITOGA project and its products relevant to all EU member states, their policy makers, and peculiarly their VET systems, the transparency and comparability of said data as well as the deductions drawn from them must and will be ensured by committing to European transparency tools available (e.g. ECVET). Three core outputs will be developed in the course of the project: > The DITOGA VET Graduate Tracking Strategy (IO1) defines not only relevant key factors that enable an ongoing alignment of VET training contents with actual needs of the field of work as well as the required systemic framework for implementation, but also comprehensive guidelines on how the data collected will contribute to the continuous improvement of VET programmes and how the strategy can be implemented successfully. > The DITOGA Mobile App (IO2) provides meaningful data sets through self-reflecting activities of VET graduates by utilising two contemporary trends: auto-analytics and gamification. The data generated will surpass the common types of data used in traditional graduate tracking systems by combining information of demographic, socio-economic, administrative, and subjective nature. The application will be tested in national pilots lasting 6 months (thereby demanding the overall duration of the project to be 30 months) and will be available for free in all partner languages for Android and Apple devices. To assure high quality and security of privacy in compliance with the European GDPR, a data protection policy will be established together with a responsible steering committee. > The DITOGA Analytics Software (IO3) will be custom-tailored to the needs of VET staff, allowing them to process, analyse, visualise, and interpret the data digitally acquired from their VET graduates in order to draw conclusions for their individual potential areas of improvement. The DITOGA partnership will develop the methodological approach for data correlation, describe the analytics functions available, and design an efficient user interface. The DITOGA project and its products will therefore serve two immediate target groups on local, regional, national, and European levels: VET providers and VET graduates including learners with fewer opportunities. As the improvement of VET systems is an issue on a structural level too, further stakeholders such as business representatives, further education and training providers, public bodies, labour market authorities, and VET policy makers on the national and EU level are approached as well. Overall, the DITOGA consortium expects at least 600 participants to be directly and actively involved in the project activities, but the dissemination and exploitation potential is even larger, considering that the project partners alone oversee 11.000 VET staff and nearly 120.000 VET learners annually. The target audiences will be involved in the development process of the DITOGA outputs from start to end of the project in personal settings (individual dialogues on participant level, focus groups, workshops, Multiplier Events, national pilots testing IO2, and a short-term learning, teaching, and training activity featuring IO3 and IO1) as well as interpersonal settings using mass media (project website, Facebook & Twitter channel). Supporting the implementation process, a variety of instruments are applied: project management plan, quality management guide, dissemination plan, data protection strategy in alignment with the EU General Data Protection Regulations, and Variance analysis tool.
BACKGROUND: The DITOGA project started on 01/09/2018. The background of the project was to meet the demands of the working world regarding the offered VET programmes of VET providers/institutions for VET students/VET graduates across Europe. Thus, the main idea was to align and adapt the offered VET programmes with the constantly changing demand of the world and therefore the labour market outside the educational institutions across Europe. A fact is, that the demands of the world of work and the labour market are constantly changing and in the context of contemporary challenges like digitalisation, individualisation and internationalisation, the skills and qualifications that were and are expected of VET students/graduates were and are constantly changing as well. VET providers have to face these challenges, but it seems that as soon as they have gathered enough relevant data and are ready to adapt their VET programmes accordingly, the world outside the VET institutions has already evolved again. This is where the DITOGA project tried to catch up with this evolvement. OBJECTIVES: That challenge of skill gaps was and still is increasingly addressed by the European Commission. In alignment with the objectives defined by the ET2020 Strategic Framework, the EQUAVET recommendations, and especially by the Riga Conclusions, the main priority of the DITOGA project was to enhance the quality and sustainability of vocational and educational training (VET) programmes across Europe in order to provide VET learners with a modern, comprehensive, and resilient skill set. By establishing continuous feedback loops on personal level with VET graduates using digital technology, new sets of meaningful qualitative and quantitative and consequently and most importantly interpretable data were generated and used complementary to existing data pools which allowed VET providers to increase their performances and efficiencies in a progressive way. Due to conducting the DITOGA project and making its products relevant and usable to and for all EU member states, their policy makers, and in particular their VET systems, the transparency and comparability of said data as well as the deductions drawn from them were ensured by committing to European transparency tools available (e.g. ECVET). PROJECT RESULTS: IO1 DITOGA VET Graduate Tracking Strategy, leading partner: Jugend am Werk Stmk. GmbH, AT: The first intellectual output (IO1) the empirical-theoretical part, in which VET providers learnt how they could use the collected data to improve their training programmes. IO2 DITOGA Mobile App, leading partner: ENTER GmbH, AT: The second intellectual output (IO2)) dealt with the creation of an app, which was used by VET students/participants and was created in cooperation with an external programmer in the project partnership. IO3 Analytics Software, leading partner: Co&So, IT: The third intellectual output (IO3) ensured the usability and accurate filtering of the data entered in the app (IO2) for the training providers in the individual project countries in the form of a database, in order to be able to adapt or re-adjust their training content accordingly and to keep a finger on the pulse of the changing requirements of the economy. In the overall context of all three intellectual outputs, the distribution of tasks in the project partnership - excluding the main responsibilities for the different IOs - was always well distributed. The tasks were accordingly well perceived and productively fulfilled by the project partners. The partner organisations with main responsibility for the individual IOs always performed their tasks very well and productively to date. The involvement of the individual project partners was in line with the original planning, except for the Belgian partners who left the project. PROJECT ACTIVITIES: Several activities were conducted during the project period by the project partnership, including five transnational project meetings (MTG1-5) the last two of which were virtual ones due to Covid-19 restrictions. Additionally, a Learning-Teaching and Training-Activity was conducted (virtually) covering the training of VET professionals for IO3 in March 2021, close to the project's end. Moreover, the Multiplier Events in the respective partner organisations took place between 31/03/2021 and 27/05/2021 as an individual handling of the different dates was more effective for the partner organisations to due Covid-19. Overall, there were 115 VET students, 96 VET professionals and 108 stakeholders involved. PROJECT PARTICIPANTS: 31 professionals/external stakeholders and 60 VET professionals participated in the conducted survey of IO1, 163 VET students/graduates tested the app during the pilot phase of IO2, 12 VET professionals were involved in the LTTA and 319 persons were involved in the MEs. This shows that there was a huge variety of people beside the project partners involved to make the project become a success.