Today’s study environment has become more challenging than ever. One of them is an integration of blended mode of teaching/learning in the lessons while, at the same time improving the teaching quality and students’ performance in the VET schools. The previous study depicted that a majority of teachers of partner VET schools need to upgrade the digital skills to ensure a higher quality educational process. Project objective: to upgrade digital competences of teachers in the blended mode of teaching/learning and to determine the most effective methods and innovative tools for the teachers and to create a compilation in a manual that will have free public access, so to promote an exchange of good practice. There will be three short-term joint staff training events (2 days training excluding traveling to/from hosting place): - (Greece) "The virtual laboratories and most effective digital teaching tools" - (Estonia) "The most effective face to face methods, approaches, tools"; - (Slovenia) "Quality education process and students’ performance". Teachers and staff (20 participants from 5 VET project partner schools) will take participation in the training activities of the project. Four transnational project partner meetings will be organized. Two meetings will be organized face to face, and two will be online meetings. During the project the following intellectual outputs will be developed: - Report (research) will be made using the results of surveys. Owing to the first survey we will find out the main internal and external factors that effect teaching quality and students’ performance in a blended teaching/learning process. The second survey will give a feedback concerning created manual. - Creation of the manual. The manual will ensure a methodical support to teachers. It will contain the most effective digital tools, virtual laboratories, animated tasks, learning games and face to face methods and approaches. Created an innovative graphical model in the manual will illustrate the main factors that influence the quality education process and students’ performance in blended teaching/learning lessons, recommended structure of lessons and recommended application of advised teaching and learning tools. - Development of the website of the project and maintenance. A website will depict essential information concerning the project, good practice of partner VET schools concerning blended teaching/learning and it will ensure free access to the manual and at least 3 video-based lecture materials from training activities. The communication and dissemination activities will be organized according the dissemination and communication strategy. A desired impact: owing to the project activities a teaching quality and students’ performance in the blended teaching/learning process will be improved. The trained teachers will become more knowledgeable, more confident with the technologies. An expected impact on the students: they will be tough by the effective methods and contemporary tools making these students successful learners and will positively affect students’ performance. An expected impact will become wider on account of trained teachers and staff who will train teachers from involved collaborative schools and will share with the good experience to community on international level.
The project objective is to produce a graphical model of the quality educational process, determine the most effective methods and innovative tools for the teachers and create a compilation in a manual that has free public access, so to promote an exchange of good practices. The training activities for teachers helped them to improve necessary competencies. The teachers were trained to use different digital tools in the first training that was held in Kilkis, Greece. In the second training event in Estonia teachers were trained regarding the most effective face-to-face methods in Estonia and the third training event in Slovenia was devoted to the topic of how to improve education quality and students' performance. The conducted surveys at the beginning of the project helped to assess the teaching quality of education and applied educational tools, techniques, methods in the classes and to evaluate the practical application of vocational education content. Integration of blended teaching/learning in VET schools raises the question: how to improve (not to worsen) teaching quality and students' performance in today's study environment of VET institutions. Teaching quality and students' performance in blended teaching/learning has affected by different internal and external factors. The current survey helped to determine these factors and to create the graphical model that is included in the third part of the manual. The results of surveys were used also for the development of the report (research) and for the elaboration of the innovative graphical model that illustrates the main factors influencing the quality education process and students’ performance in lessons. The scientific article was developed on basis of the conducted survey. The article "ASSESSMENT OF THE QUALITY OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION BY STUDENTS AND TEACHERS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF BLENDED FORMS OF TEACHING IN FIVE EUROPEAN COUNTRIES" has been published in the proceedings of the international conference in Ljubljana. The manual includes a compilation of 40 different digital tools, virtual laboratories, 40 interesting and engaging face-to-face methods, and the graphical model reflects the main factors that influence the quality education process. There is a short description of every digital tool, and face-to-face method as well there is step-by-step information - on how to use a certain digital tool or face-to-face method. The manual ensures methodical support for different subject teachers and managers of educational institutions. The graphical model is useful for teachers and managers who are in charge of quality educational processes. It helps managers of VET schools to understand what changes VET schools need to implement. The manual has been translated into 6 foreign languages: English, Slovenian, Estonian, Lithuanian, Greek, and Latvian. The manual is available on the project website. Its content provides methodological support for teachers and managers of educational institutions. Organized four transnational project partner meetings facilitated to implement the project. They are important for project partners to discuss the topical issues of the project at a certain period of time. Meetings are good for discussions concerning the results of monitoring (organizational, process (activities), financial and results monitoring). It helps to remind partners essential tasks, activities, the necessity of some action, and to follow the schedule. Created dissemination and communication strategy provided project partners with a determined action plan of dissemination and communication. It ensured effective dissemination of project results and good practice of partners at the local/regional/national level. Establishing networking with other VET schools fosters the dissemination of the project results and provides future cooperation in the VET field.
According to the results of the survey in the previous Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership project “Millennials and Post-Millennials: Challenges and Opportunities for Teachers and Employers” 59% of students indicated that they would like to see improvements in the lessons. They pointed out necessary improvements: more useful content to be delivered, more group works, more modern technologies in the classes, and the application of digital tools in the lessons. Improving digital skills for teachers was also needed to run online classes or blended teaching/learning. Not all teachers had good digital skills. More than half of teachers (60%) fall in the age group of 35-50 and about 30% of teachers in the partner VET schools are over 50 years old. They needed to receive training and upgrade their digital skills. Therefore, the short-term joint staff training event "The virtual laboratories and most effective digital teaching tools" was organized in Greece. The second necessity of this project - a large part of students gradually loses communication skills that are necessary in the labor market. Consequently, teachers needed to update knowledge on the effective use of face-to-face interactive teaching methods that promote necessary communication, collaboration skills, and creativity for students. Therefore, the short-term joint staff training event "The most effective face-to-face methods, approaches, tools" was organized in Estonia. Thus, trained teachers are able to provide interesting and engaging lessons using effective face-to-face methods with the aim to develop necessary communication, collaboration skills, and creativity to students. The third necessity of this project is to save the quality level of teaching and/or improve it in blended teaching/learning and online lessons. Therefore, the graphical model was developed. It reflects the main factors that influence the quality education process. It was created after the third short-term joint staff training event "Quality education process and students’ performance" in Slovenia and taking into account the results of the surveys for teachers and students. The graphical model is useful for teachers and managers who are in charge of quality educational processes. It helps managers of VET schools to understand what changes VET schools need to implement. Trained teachers shared acquired competencies with other educators at local, national, and international levels. To provide continuous development of teachers in the field of digital tools and effective face-to-face methods the manual was created compiling 40 different digital tools, 40 effective face-to-face methods, graphical model in the manual that has free public access on the project website.