The aim of the project was to reflect on the needs of the labour market against vocational education and training, to prepare VET teachers to work in collaboration with companies to develop project tasks for students and enable them to implement these successfully by developing extra-cullicular micro-courses for them.To achieve these, the partnership: • reviewed the curriculum, learning materials and teaching methods used in the initial training of IT and Agricultural sectors in the partner countries; • trained VET teachers of these sectors in using the project method, related digital tools, innovative assessment practices and digital content creation; • assigned real-life project tasks to VET students, in close collaboration of teachers and labor market representatives; • created an online repository of project-based, re-usable, high-quality, motivating digital learning content with an interdisciplinary approach; • prepared students for successful project implementation by designing and delivering mini-courses ; • created a model description to be published as a guide for teachers of other VET institutes for replication.
Vocational education and training (VET) has a key role in preparing young professionals for the challenges of a rapidly evolving global and digital economy. However, education often operates in isolation from the business world, with a widening gap between the skills provided by schools and those required by employers. Textbooks in many cases are not updated regularly and are not motivating enough for students born into the digital world and hardly contain real-life examples of working situations. While most workplaces expect staff to work in a project-oriented way, the project approach and its associated forms of work are still not integrated into training, and a significant number of trainers are not yet prepared to apply this approach. The multidisciplinary approach is difficult to integrate with traditional teaching methods, even though young graduates need to apply knowledge and skills from different subjects at the same time to solve real -life work problems. While employers expect prospective employees to work in teams and on projects, the project method and related forms of work are not widespread in VET and project-based teaching methods are often missing from the curricula.