VOOCS for VET teacher professionalization: Lessons learned from the EU Erasmus+ Pro-VET project

Areas for further research / development

One of the major lessons underlined by Pro-VET’s Russian and Serbian partners was that developing VOOCs is considered a puzzle. Partners argued that it requires teams to constantly navigate between ambitions, goals, appropriate pedagogy, available resources and what is technically possible within the platform and used architecture of the course. A ‘balancing act’ between ambition and staying realistic. In other words: there is no ‘golden bullet’ for developing ODL tools. 

The project was also a very bumpy road: learning about ODL, technical designs, needed skills, for partners new and rather unconventional pedagogical approach to learning (active learning vs. inactive teacher centered learning), cultural differences in collaboratively working on ODL tools etc. not to mention the outbreak of COVID-19 and the invasion of Ukraine and subsequent EU sanctions against Russia (which terminated our collaboration with the Russian partners). Altogether this strongly underlined the value and importance of Online Distance Learning and M/VOOCs. 

In short, some inroads for further research/development (capacity building):

• International educational professionals’ experiences and competencies in developing Online Distance Learning Tools / M/VOOCs. Exchange between more and less experienced professionals (EU / non-EU / globally). 
• Their experiences and competencies of collaborating in international and inter-disciplinary / cultural dimensions. 
• Exchanging innovative and effective active pedagogical strategies in general as well as applied in online learning environments.  
• ODL and MOOCs as effective learning tools. Developing of new methods, techniques, platforms. Studying effects, approaches, methodologies etc. 

The Pro-VET team/community welcomes future dialogue, contacts, partnerships and collaboration, globally, with professionals of all kinds (researchers, practitioners, teachers, trainers, educators etc.) interested in collective new endeavors in the above fields of research and development.