Vocational training 4.0 – centred on people

Held in Bern on 22 October 2018, SFIVET’s DigitalSkills conference was a major highlight of the year.

View of the various participants in the conference hall

SFIVET/Ben Zurbriggen

Everything at this event revolved around the question of how to provide learners with the latest training technology and how to optimally shape the digital transformation of vocational education and training. In addition to experts from SFIVET, speakers included Federal Councillor Johann N. Schneider-Ammann, Prof Dr Jürgen Schmidhuber, expert and pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, National Councillor Hans-Ulrich Bigler, Director of the Swiss Trade Association, and Suzanne Thoma, CEO of the BKW Group.

OBS SFIVET presented its new trend report on ‘Digitalisation and Vocational Education and Training’. SFIVET also presented its position paper ‘Digital Transformation and Vocational Education and Training: Centred on People’, which focusses on five aspects of the digital transformation and proposes various measures. The paper points out ways in which VET stakeholders can make use of the opportunities offered by the digital transformation and overcome associated challenges. The position paper also provides SFIVET with a frame of reference for its own digitalisation strategy.

The conference included two sequences of transfer sessions where experts in the area of VET research and practices spoke about their best practice experiences. There was also the DigitalBubbles exhibition, which showcased ten innovative digital projects. The conference was fully booked with around 800 participants from all areas of vocational education and training. After the conference, 76 percent of the participants in an online survey agreed with the statement that vocational education and training is particularly suitable for exploiting the potential of digitalisation.