Abstract:

The objective of this paper to analyze the practice of online education in the frame of open content development in the VET environment. According to the Digital Education Action Plan, (EC, 2018), VET institutions endeavor better to adapt to work in a time of recent digital change by making better use of digital technology for teaching and learning. The new learning theory initiatives (Nore, Herrera) in the frame of vocational education and training (VET) didactic focus to the distribution of the Online Education. This topic has strong VET didactical features (Gessler, M.; Herrera L. M.; 2015), and is partly connected to the endeavours which strive to shape the alternatives of the traditional training programs in the online learning environment determined by modern info-communication technology (Colons, A.; Halverson, R. 2009; Benedek, A.; Molnár, Gy. 2014, 2015, Piet K., 2017). Our innovation has shown new results by the Open Content Development (OCD) model in the frame of a technical university where the vocational teacher training gives us parallel to improve the methodological knowledge for the new VET teachers. Our research methodologically is action research. It also includes general analyzation that uses the latest results of the topics of the learning environment and interactive-collaborative online learning as the base for the process of open content development. During our efforts to analyze the Online Education Practice within the framework of our network-based action research implemented between 2016-2018, we found that student participation offered great potentials about the content development and the teaching methodology as well.

According to our research activities the OCD model, which obtained on the results of several learning content digitalizing projects, was built upon the recognition of the change in the teaching-learning paradigm presented above. Our young students in VET system who gain network knowledge in a variety of ways in today’s ICT environment are not sufficiently motivated to learn and elaborate traditional learning materials. This finding is especially relevant as young people’s communication practices, including communication amongst themselves, using the services offered by community applications and dominated by multimodality using image messages. This new multimodal environment represents new possibilities of education and demonstration such as learning based on playing, virtual worlds and the development of customized learning environments with permanently attached forms of communications such as thematic blogs and professional e-portfolios providing information on one’s professional activities.

The conclusion argues that in case we provide a targeted methodological support within the frames of open vocational content development, the education theoretical and methodological innovation will be possible to be implemented effectively at the level of school practice, as well. The paper focuses the experiences of the online micro-content based development and the effectual sample and results of the subject of VET. Our examination within the network of the 12 VET pilot schools proposes well adoptable methodological potentials in the topic of online education practice by using Open Content Development method. We have also determined the future developing areas such as developing a mobile phone application, supporting the idea of bringing your device and cloud-based solutions.

Keywords:

Open Content Development, Online Education Practice, VET, ICT environment, cloud-based system.