Didactic parallelism and learning location flexibility

Project description

The research project aims to address a central basic problem of initial vocational training in the Federal Republic of Germany:

In the system of initial vocational education and training, the dual structure of learning locations and the associated theory-practice coupling give rise to problematic and thus ultimately risky situations that have not yet been satisfactorily resolved by legal, administrative or informal regulations. In particular, the asynchrony in terms of location and time structure (company work organization structure - school teaching organization structure) and content (difference between content and didactic parallelism) as well as the problem of individual transfer performance (theoretical reflection on practical work) provoke mismatches in training processes that require a disproportionately high expenditure of institutional and individual resources.

The optimization of cooperation between companies, vocational schools and, where applicable, educational institutions has therefore long been the focus of research and funding. In recent initiatives, the approach of using IT-based concepts to resolve the problem areas mentioned has also become apparent. In the 28 pilot projects of the Federal-Länder Commission for Educational Planning and Research Promotion from 1999 to 2003, organizational possibilities for cooperation between the participating training partners were examined in five areas of action, but there were also projects that examined the possibilities of Internet-based cooperation platforms (cf. BLK project "Development and use of educational networks for the development and testing of training modules in IT and media professions (ANUBA)" or "Knowledge forum as an instrument for improving cooperation between learning venues (WISLOK)"). At the same time, there have also been other attempts, some of which have been freely financed, to implement teaching and learning with commercially procured digital media in dual vocational training in order to achieve a communicative and didactic dissolution of boundaries between the learning venues.

However, the initiatives have so far only made partial progress towards resolving the problem areas described, for example by initiating informal processes between the training partners through improved IT-supported communication. The following issues in particular remain unresolved in the academic discussion and in practice in the efforts and initiatives for IT-supported learning venue cooperation described above:

• The lack of subject-oriented didactic concepts.
• The lack of didactically and medially high-quality e-learning modules.

The research project therefore aims to,

• ...to supplement established didactic concepts with authoring processes in such a way that audiovisual media are developed, tested and published directly in the learning process (user-generated content) so that they can be used in a different context at other learning locations if necessary.
• ...to examine the learning/production process with regard to its subject formation content as a necessary prerequisite for effective and efficient learning process design.

This is because the results of expertise research, research on learning venue cooperation and I and K research to date show one thing very clearly:

The problem of theory-practice coupling in vocational education and training cannot be solved institutionally, but only through subject formation processes. This, according to the central thesis of the project, is promoted by synchronizing learning and work processes by means of generic schemes (web 2.0-supported teaching/learning actions). The expected research results can thus form the basis for the nationwide further development of

• didactic scenarios for the realization of didactic parallelism,
• completely new, technically supported didactic scenarios for activating trainees,
• support processes in working with socially disadvantaged groups (including illiterate people),
• approaches and concepts for (dual) initial and further training, also in the sense of modularization (National Qualification Framework)

and also in other application contexts such as knowledge management in SMEs.

Literature

• Buchmann, Ulrike/Huisinga, Richard (2012): Joint project "Didactic parallelism and learning location flexibilization" (DiPaL) - Medial implementation of the concept of learning through teaching. Sub-project evaluation. Final report/funding code 01 PF 070 23E. Bonn/Berlin: bmbf.

Vocational training center of Kreishandwerkerschaft Märkischer Kreis e.V.

Wolfgang Linke
E-mail: w.linke@kh-mk.de
Telephone: 0 23 71/95 81-33

Dirk Dittmann
E-mail: d.dittmann@kh-mk.de
Phone: 0 23 71/95 81-33

Vocational college of the Märkischer Kreis in Iserlohn

Markus Schäfer, OStR
Phone: +49 (0) 170 474 00 87
E-mail: markus.schaefer@kfz4me.de

Vocational Training Center Hellweg e.V.

Haus des Handwerks
Am Handwerk 4
59494 Soest
02921/892-0