ABOUT SELFIE

Most educational institutions have problems addressing digital transformation on operational level although many supporting tools, literature and good practices have been developed. VET schools with all their sector specific challenges and rapid developments are put into an even more challenging situation as they have to apply digitalisation to these professional digital developments.

SELFIE is a free tool, designed to help schools embed digital technologies into teaching, learning and assessment and therefore identify the digital readiness of schools. Nevertheless, it does not cover sector specific issues and apprenticeships which are one of the vital parts of VET schools.

In spring 2020 Joint Research Centre published a tender to pilot the SELFIE WBL tool (related to apprenticeships, involving also incompany trainers) in 4 EU countries (France, Germany, Poland, and Hungary). The partnership piloted SELFIE WBL in the 4 mentioned countries engaging a total of 59 VET schools, 97 in-company trainers, 177 school leaders, 1,221 VET teachers, 10,294 VET students, and 43 school coordinators in the pilot.

VET schools received a detailed report with a lot of data and information from different stakeholders. Nevertheless, all of them found it difficult to translate the results into actions to effectively address the digital transformation of their VET school. They missed recommendations based on results, good practices and a possibility to benchmark not as a ranking list but rather to have an indication what these results mean in the national or EU context. Furthermore, VET schools learned that their communication with the companies is quite poor and expressed the need to strengthen the ecosystem with their regional stakeholders.

To address all these open questions of the VET schools engaged in the pilot the same partnership decided to apply for this SELFIE WBL Follow Up project.