Martin Zgraggen published a literature analysis citing one of these papers. He mentions the TIBL Project as

A current study project based on student’s perspective (Mazohl, Ossiannilsson, & Makl, 2018) is (2017 – 2019) conducted under the umbrella of Technical Innovation in Blended Learning (TIBL). An EU project on continuous vocational education investigating the use of multiple devices in blended learning. The activities performed are the development, implementation, performing and evaluation of pilot courses in C-VET.
Source: Literature review: Blended learning in Vocational Educational Training Hospitality Courses Zgraggen, Martin December 2018

The mentioned citation is part of the project “Blended Learning in Vocational Educational Training (Hospitality Industry)” and serves as a bases for further phases in the project.

This quote in another project shows the good project results and their influence or the further usability in the field of vocational training and here in particular in continuous vocational education and training (C-VET).

The keynote speaker, Univ.Prof. Felix Breitenecker (from the University of Technology, Vienna) gave an introduction to the project. Harald Makl and Peter Mazohl (from the EFQBL) presented the project and the results with the specific focus on

• The developed pedagogical framework
• The quality enhancement framework
• The use of multiple devices, and
• The Toolbox

Here is an image album of the successful event!

eXe-Learning – a tool developed for learning platforms – will be used in the TIBL Project

The open issues were the translation of the MOOC content as well as the pre-decision for a technical tool to create the content of the MOOC.

The product finally selected was eXe-Learning. eXe-Learning is a free software tool under GPL-2 that can be used to create educational interactive web contents in XHTML or HTML5 format. It allows to create easily navigable web pages including text, images, interactive activities (created for example in H5P), image galleries or multimedia clips. All the educational materials generated with eXe-Learning can be exported in different digital formats, to be used independently or to integrate them into a LMS (Learning Management System) like Moodle.

eXe-Learning will be used to provide the content in each chapter.

The chapter structure is developed using the same pattern with an introduction, the pre-information, the content, and a self-evaluation unit. This pattern follows he TIBL-training concept as developed in the project.

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Technical background

eXe-Learning id developed in Python, a web-based programming language. The development tool runs in any modern web browser and offers a rich toolbox of activities.

Peter Mazohl (EFQBL), Ebba Ossiannielsson (SADE) and Luca Reitano (DigiLab) in the coffee break during the meeting and consultations in Rome (10/2018)

Peter Mazohl, Harald Makl (EFQBL), Ebba Ossiannielsson (SADE) and Luca Reitano (DigiLab) met to consultations in October 2018 in Rome. The discussed topics covered the development of documents and chapters for the MOOC as well as the creation of content for the “Trainers’ Toolbox”. Besides this, the publishing of the multiple device report (as a scientific paper) was discussed.

Another item was the planning and the start of the preparation work for the next meeting, which will take place in March in Rome at DigiLab.

In this meeting the developed materials will be reviewed finally and fixed.

DigiLab Rome, part of the University La Sapienza, is established in the refurbished building of an ald glas and mirror factory.

Currently, the partners are developing the MOOC (for the trainers’ training) and specific items for the toolbox. The EFQBL is working on the introduction videos and has just finished the first successful tryouts.

Meeting in Lund: Discussion of various items dealing with the course creation and the toolbox.

The intermediate meeting of the project took place in Lund (Sweden). Here we found the best working conditions for the project team.

The goals in this meeting were to clear all open issues in the tools for developing the pilot courses. There were activities like:

• Discussion and clearing of open issues for the pilot course implementation and performing
• Evaluation of monitoring activities with amendment steps, intermediate evaluation report (project plan EGC, quality and progress, partnership and cooperation), progress report
• Evaluation of the teaching activity
• Organisational items (preparation of an intermediate report)
• Coordination of dissemination activities
• Preparation of special dissemination activities (conference participation)

Besides this, various internal and content related issues could be fixed and agreed.

Video as media in training

The importance of using media in teaching, training, and learning was made visible at the Media & Learning Meeting 2018 (Leuven, Belgium). The fact that more than half of the European universities use videos in teaching was the reason to assemble educators from universities to discuss the topic and to develop strategies and settings of a most efficient use of media.

Differences in the TIBL-project

Discussion at the teaching event: How to use multimedia in courses? Special guest is Andreia Inamorato dos Santos (from the JRC)

In the TIBL-Project the use of media is a must – the project partners promote multimedia material and interactive training material for the training.
An important issue is to use interactive video: Videos are a kind of “one-way material” and can give you the knowledge to do something. For example, you use a YouTube video to exchange your broken laptop display. After you have done you have the typical forgetting course and after some hours you have completely forgotten everything.

Therefore, the project group developed the use of interactive videos used in the MOODLE environment of the project. These interactive videos and other interactive multimedia material provide a better training result (and finally make more fun during the training).

Theory behind

Mayer describes the fundamental principle behind multimedia learning as “People learn
better from words and pictures than from words alone.” This means that using both words and pictures is more effective than
words alone. Mayer also researched that narration and video appear to be more effective than narration, video and text (I would call it “overloaded multimedia).

Conclusion

Following these ideas, it also would make sense to create multimedia based PowerPoints (with a minimum of text) and add voice. These slides could be used online (for distance learning) as well.

Technical comments

Creating multimedia content must be planned well, is time consuming and needs a high level of competences. Shared material (as Open Educational Resources) are a way to offer not so well-educated people high quality multimedia-based material.

References:
Richard E. Mayer, in: Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 67, Pages 1-318 (2017), Edited by Brian H. Ross
Mayer (2014): The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning, Second Edition: Cambridge University Press.

The interest and the feedback of the audience showed the importance of the project and the need of appropriate and ready-to-use support of trainers.

Achieved results

The project focuses on continuous vocational education and training (C-VET). In the project special courses using multiple devices will be developed. For these courses a specific training framework (covering the pedagogical aspects) has been developed.

Other used frameworks are the DigiComp 2.0 Framework for Citizens (developed by the JRE of the European Commission) and the e-Xellence framwork (for course developing, created by the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities EADTU).

Currently, the course with the umbrella organisation of the Sakralenergetiker (in Austria, with assistence of the Austrian partner EFQBL) is developed and the first implementation of content are done.

Future aspects

The next step in the project is the development of a MOOC which assista trainers in the course creating. Additional, a toolbox for the trainers containing a specific list of tools is in development.

About the EDEN Conference

The Conference programme includes plenaries, parallel sessions with paper presentations, workshops, trainings, moderated poster and demo sessions and the synergy strand, ensuring digital interactivity and cooperation on the social web.

The event started on Sunday afternoon on 17 June, with registration, followed by the Welcome Reception and ended with a Farewell Coffee on 20 June.

The CSEDU is the International Conference on Computer Supported Education (1) and is a meeting place for presenting and discussing new educational environments, best practices and case studies on innovative technology-based learning strategies, institutional policies on computer supported education.

2018, the conference took place in Funchal, Madeira and had the 10^th year’s anniversary. A special session was foreseen to the topic “Blended Learning and Quality Enhancement – BLQE 2018” (2), chaired by Ebba Ossiannilsson (The Swedish Association for Distance Education, SADE).

The consortium submitted a paper, that was accepted and presented by Peter Mazohl (European Foundation for Quality in Blended Learning, EFQBL) in the frame of this session.

The presentation focused on the Blended Learning situation as described in this project, with the special focus on SMEs. In the project, several dependencies and obstacles to perform blended learning courses in C-VET (especially in SMEs) were identified and presented at the conference.

The audience agreed strongly to the mentioned problems and the need of the execution of this project. During the discussion, interesting feedback was given by some listeners of the presentation, and this made clear, that the mentioned problems are not isolated in Europe but exist as well in other parts of the world, for example in South America (for example in Brazil).

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(1) http://www.csedu.org/?y=2018
(2) http://www.csedu.org/SpecialSessions.aspx?y=2018

He had the opportunity to present the TIBL-Project and to discuss currently identified problems in education, the position of MOOCs in the educational landscape, the problems of motivation and self-responsibilities of the trainees/learners as well as the use of technology in trainings. André Richier (DG GROW) attended the workshop as a representative of the Commission.

André Richier (in the middle) folllowing the presentations. To the left Darco Jansen (EADTU, NL)

Focus of this meeting was to clear several open questions:

• What exactly needs to be done and by whom to stimulate the uptake of online training by SMEs in Europe?
• How should the funding of online training-related initiatives for the workforce be organised?
• How can online training best complement other (more traditional) forms of training?
• What are the most promising ways of reaching out to the workforce (particularly within SMEs), to engage them into online training?

In the discussion it turned out that several issues of the TIBL project are also relevant for the training in SMEs and problems identified in the project also occure in other European countries. TIBL’s concept wase done two years ago – this demonstrates that the consortium had a clear vision to the future and identified typical problems of training in VET / C-VET in an very early stage.

AndrasSzücs (EDEN, HU), Piet Hendrix (EADTU, NL), Alfredo Soeiro (University of Porto, PT)

-, Alan Bruce (ULS Dublin, EI), -, Kristina Dervojeda (Pwc, NL)

On behalf of the consortium, Peter Mazohl submitted a paper about the project (with the co-authors Ebba Ossiannilsson and Harald Makl). At the conference the project with a special focus on the rationale, the identification of the problems and the strategies for solving the mentioned problems was presented. In an interesting discussion several aspects of the project were analysed by the audience.

Several identified aspects were agreed by the listeners. This was for example the problem, that learning can not be delegated, as well as the identified problematic situation of the use of multiple devices in technology enhanced training.

Slide of the presentation: This is the outlay of the project, demonstrating the basic project related items and the context between them.

About the CSEDU: The International Conference on Computer Supported Education is one of the most important meeting places for the presentation and discussion of computer-supported learning.