Analyses, answers and suggestions

Hand of an employee moves across digital background

Sergey Nivens/Fotolia

At the DigitalSkills conference on 22 October 2018, researchers from the Swiss Observatory for Vocational Education and Training (OBS SFIVET) presented the new trend report entitled ‘Digitalisation and VET: Challenges and Roads Ahead’. In five articles, OBS SFIVET’s trend report provides answers to the question of whether the vocational education training system needs to be radically restructured for digital transformation – or whether all that is needed is to build on existing strengths and tackle weaknesses.

Specifically, the five texts raise the following questions: Does dual-track vocational education and training have a future? Will cross-cutting competences be in growing demand in the future? How can VET ordinances remain up-to-date? How can digital technologies be used in teaching? Do teachers need to change their roles?

OBS SFIVET concludes in its report that vocational education and training is fundamentally well prepared for the digital transformation. It is, however, very important to ensure that employees are able to continuously pursue education and training and upgrade their qualifications. The report therefore advocates a more flexible vocational education and training system and sees more open training plans as an important means of achieving this. According to the trend report, anyone who wants to use digital technologies efficiently in teaching not only requires know-how and the necessary infrastructure, but also the corresponding didactic skills: Experience has shown that the learning process can only be meaningfully supported by new technological means if it is based on solid didactic concepts.

The trend report is based on OBS SFIVET’s trend monitoring activities and analyses carried out by researchers on the subject of digitalisation. One example is the study commissioned by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs entitled ‘How Digitalisation has Changed Skills Requirements on the Labour Market’ (‘Die Entwicklung der Kompetenzanforderungen auf dem Arbeitsmarkt im Zuge der Digitalisierung’).