Evaluating a Mobile and Online System for Apprentices' Learning Documentation in Vocational Education

Abstract

In Switzerland, 99% of teenagers own a mobile phone and use it as their primary spare-time activity. Exploiting the affordances that mobile devices have for fostering learning across contexts is therefore imperative for the educational community. This is especially true in the case of dual vocational education and training (VET) – a field under-investigated with respect to mobile learning – where apprentices alternate between a company and vocational school. After introducing the major issues characterising mobile learning and their relevance to the VET context, the paper presents a project involving apprentice chefs and their teacher, with the aim of exemplifying and exploring VET learning between workplace and classroom, as a conversation between the learner, the teacher and the in-company trainer, and to evaluate the results of its implementation in terms of usability, effectiveness, and satisfaction.

“I Reflect, Therefore I Am… a Good Professional”. On the Relationship between Reflection-on-Action, Reflection-in-Action and Professional Performance in Vocational Education

“…In a previous study on apprentice chefs, we showed that instructional activities fostering them to reflect on their job performance were effective. In particular, we demonstrated the effectiveness of promoting reflection-on-action through instructional activities based on prompts regarding declarative knowledge acquisition, metacognitive skills development, and attitude towards reflection (Cattaneo et al 2015). Metacognition-here, the individuals' knowledge regarding cognitive processes and the application of this knowledge for controlling the same processes (Flavell 1979)-was taken in its components, including planning, monitoring, debugging, tentativeness of explanation (Schraw and Dennison 1994) as an indicator of reflection.…”

“…The learning activities and materials were exactly the same for both classes and conducted by the same teacher. Overall, the activities included ten plenary lessons of about four units each and four sessions organised around collaborative, small-group activities (see Cattaneo et al 2015;Motta et al 2017). Independent of the social organisation of the activities, they were all designed starting with the apprentices' learning journal entries.…”

Exploring visual languages across vocational professions

“…For instance, the pedagogical model 'Erfahrraum' (Schwendimann, Cattaneo, Dehler, & Zufferey, 2015) can be used for designing activities aimed at the integration of knowledge and professional skills. Examples in this direction are the work of Cattaneo, Motta and Gurtner (2015) with chefs or studies such as the one from Caruso (2017) that identified how fundamental observational skills are for fashion designers and the potential of developing a training program to promote this ability. Along this line, further research will continue to explore representations and annotations in vocational education, the possibility of developing e-tools to build students' visual abilities with the help of representations and annotations and, at the same time, the development of an educational scenario to provide better integration between school and workplace.…”

The State-of-the-Art of Collaborative Technologies for Initial Vocational Education: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Technology enabled new kinds of activities to supplement traditional vocational classroom and workplace practices. For example, mobile tools were introduced to bridge the physical boundaries of the school and workplaces (Cattaneo, Motta, & Gurtner, 2015). 3D spaces provided safe environments to practice dangerous team-work practices e.g.…”