Apparently, students of vocational training during pandemic had to encounter and adapt to an unfamiliar and unprecedented training framework. In addition, VET educators had to comply and find ways to maintain course quality.

Vocational Training During Pandemic: Focusing on the Learners

The students of vocational training, had to develop additional skills that correspond to the emerging needs. Skills were redefined and new were added, in order to adapt to the new rules passed due to the pandemic. In any case, among the supplementary skills, are the following:

• Students had to improve digital skills, to a greater extent, and get accustomed to new ones.
• In addition, they had to cope with how lessons were conducted, not only in terms of digital competences, but in terms of a wider spectrum. In this framework, skills such as: maintaining their engagement to virtual lesson deliveries; develop skills of adaptation to the new processes etc.

Adaptation and Quality Assurance in Vocational Training

The field of education encountered many challenges and had to adjust efficiently; and in case of vocational training, solutions were sought, from conducting lessons in virtual classrooms to redefining the frame of work-based learning (WBL). Among the challenges emerged for VET, was to ensure their frame needed to be redefined, in order to deliver. Hence, all these changes needed to meet certain quality standards.

As an institute with expertise in education, among other fields, iED acknowledges the overturn of the existent circumstances and the need for ensuring quality in the educational framework. Furthermore, our institute partners with other European organizations that share the same ideas on the subject.

“InnoTrain: Innovative Training in VET. Professional development of VET-business key actors for qualitative WBL experiences” is an Erasmus+ project whose overall goal revolves around work-based learning, as an intermediate stage, between learning and professional practice. At this stage, InnoTrain has materialized the third deliverable, which is the development of a practical guide that foresees all the parameters that assure quality for WBL; and to a greater extent, quality assurance for vocational training during pandemic.