Digital media in company-based vocational education and training

These questions were investigated in a cross-domain setting in the fields of mechatronics, commercial occupations and (elderly) care.
As a basis for this investigation, a structural model describing the media-pedagogical competence of in-company training staff was first developed; the current state of media appropriation and media use in the everyday practice of in-company training staff was then analysed by means of an online survey as well as group interviews and user-story workshops.
The overarching aim was to make better use in future of the manifold potentials offered by digital media in designing company-based teaching and learning processes by promoting the media-pedagogical competence of in-company training staff.

The opportunities arising from the use of digital media and the internet to support teaching and learning processes and thus to increase the quality and effectiveness of educational measures were being discussed everywhere. In company-based VET in particular, however, these potentials appeared to be barely exploited. This was shown, for example, by an extensive document analysis of specialist articles on the use of digital media in VET conducted in 2013 and a simultaneous online survey of in-company trainers by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training’s internet portal www.foraus.de. These showed that the benefit of using digital media anticipated by in-company training staff still corresponded to the classic understanding of making content available. Further options for enriching company-based qualification processes through digital media were not reflected upon. Accordingly, the selection and use of digital media by in-company training staff were characterised by different forms, intentions and rationales as well as varying intensity and quality.

Until then, however, there were hardly any findings on media appropriation and media use in the everyday practice of in-company training staff. In media studies, the term media appropriation stands for the assumption that media do not change processes or human communication behaviour by virtue of their own logic; rather, individuals select and make use of media in ways that are relevant to them – in other words, they appropriate them. To emphasise the individual dimension (the trainers), the term ‘appropriation’ was preferred to the term ‘use’ for the research project. Against this background, answers were to be developed to the questions of how in-company training staff select digital media, how they use them in vocational initial and continuing training processes, and what support needs they see. The theoretical approach to these questions was a concept of media-pedagogical competence according to TULODZIECKI.

The media-pedagogical competence of in-company training staff was to be described on the basis of expert interviews. In line with the findings from the interviews, an online questionnaire was then designed to analyse the current state of media appropriation and media use in the everyday practice of in-company training staff. The results were deepened and interpreted from the subjects’ perspective through group interviews in three selected occupations (one each from the domains ‘industrial-technical occupations’, ‘commercial occupations’ and ‘health and care occupations’). Finally, criteria were drawn up to support in-company training staff in analysing and selecting digital media for designing vocational teaching and learning processes.