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

• Pieter Seuneke
• Frank de Jong

Aeres Hogeschool Wageningen

This MESH guide is based on the EU Erasmus+ Pro-VET project. Pro-VET has introduced a systematic approach to continuous professional development of VET teachers (in-service trainers, instructors, mentors etc.) via E-learning tools or Vocational Open Online Courses (VOOC’s, as a vocational counterpart of the well-known Massive Open Online Course, MOOC). In the project, EU partners (Finland, Germany, Ireland and The Netherlands) together with non-EU partners (Russia and Serbia) have jointly worked on the development of VOOCS aimed at VET-teacher professionalization in Russia and Serbia. This MESH guide presents the project: Pro-VET’s aims, objectives and revisits its underlying methodology. We also share our collective knowledge, joint theoretical foundations on resp. Vocational Education and Training (VET), VET-teaching, VET teacher professionalization as well as on Online Distance Learning (ODL) and VOOC’s. We will present our design practices, methodology and process and share our experiences and most important lessons learned from jointly developing E-learning tools for VET teacher professionalization. Description of the products as well as the reflections on the process were based on an online questionnaire completed by most project partners.