The project focused on improving teachers’ pedagogical competence to operate online with their students, supplying the teachers with relevant agile and cooperative methods of work and digital tools, creating online communities of teachers where they can jointly develop, learn from each other and exchange experiences, and empowering the students by providing individualized learning and improved collaborative learning processes online. By implementing these the project focused on VET teachers to achieve better pedagogical and digital competence and their capability to implement meaningful learning activities in various blended learning settings to their students. New digital tools and modern methods needed to be applied and digital micro credentials (open badges) introduced, used and analyzed during the project. Project wanted to give to students individualized learning and improved collaborative blended learning environments which are designed to increase student engagement and motivation. The project thrives to build solutions and tools to support VET teachers competence development according to DigCompEdu framework (2021) and through that quality VET education in blended learning environments.
The combination of on-site and distant learning has become a new reality in these times when only 38% of EU teachers feel well prepared for the use of digital technology in their daily work (European Commission, 2020). In practice, many issues related to the quality of blended learning in VET have not been addressed and VET teachers lack the needed pedagogical and digital competencies to plan and implement training in collaborative and blended learning environments. The project was developed based on the current situation and development needs of partners. The unifying goal for all CoBle partners is the need to improve teachers’ pedagogical and digital practices of the implementation of blended learning and offer students individualized and collaborative online learning activities. The following issues was rise: Importance of further developing the approach of individualized learning in collaborative learning environments, need to explore methods and tools to support teachers and students, demand to find systematic and flexible ways to build up teachers digital and pedagogical competence to facilitate learning in blended learning environments to increase the capacity and resilience of vocational education.