Strategies for blended TVET in response to Covid-19

Abstract

Within TVET programmes learners acquire knowledge,but also need to master practical and soft skills. Practical and soft skills can be up to 80% of a programme and may be impossible to develop online. Therefore, most TVET programmes need to include face-to-face learning in workshops or workplaces to practice and master these skills,which makes it challenging to continue offering TVET when educational institutions and businesses are closed. However, parts of TVET programmes can be moved online and offered by distance. Blending distance learning with workplace learning has proven effective for nearly 200 years since Pitman began teaching shorthand by correspondence in 1840. In 1910, in response to a typhoid epidemic, Australia introduced its first distance TVET to train health inspectors by correspondence while they continued to work. Today, examples of blended learning for TVET are evident across the world in workplaces, formal educational institutions, and community settings. This document defines ‘blended TVET’ as the practice of building competence in knowledge, and practical and soft skills through a combination of face-to-face and technology enabled learning experiences. Distance learning is where the blend allows learners to develop competence online or in their workplace or community and does not require them to attend a physical campus. In the current crisis, ‘as-distance-as-possible’ TVET allows for continuing its selected components, upskilling of essential workers in their workplaces, and starting to reskill displaced workers, while observing physical distancing guidelines. It also offers the potential to rethink traditional TVET models to be able to reduce costs and increase flexibility, and thus reach marginalised and remote learners, including those working in the informal sector. This also presents opportunities to build TVET systems which can be more resilient in the face of other possible disruptions, such as further waves of infection, other pandemics, effects of climate change and civil wars.