Education and innovation - vet students into technology companies

VET education is an effective and accessible way for students, to improve their employability and inclusion possibilities. It allows them to train technically in a short time to do a job and try to access the labor market. However, not even obtaining a qualification aimed at vocational training ensures access to the labor market or real possibilities of emancipation. The success of VET graduates in their first work experience joining technology companies requires the development of many skills that are common to all professional careers, but also specific skills that derive from the innovative nature of the work method and objectives of these companies. For this reason, within the framework of the Erasmus + Program, the project VET STUDENTS İNTO TECHNOLOGY COMPANİES: A VET students mobility network in the technological sector through a virtual environment with specific materials for critical thinking is being developed with the aim of promoting employability and inclusion of VET students at risk of exclusion. The project focuses on the creation of virtual tools, collaborative work methodologies and virtual training materials that allow these young people to improve their critical thinking capacity and their technological and digital skills. The project's methodology is based on the combination of the creation of training materials and a network of mobility in high-tech centres, where students will carry out a first work experience. Regarding training materials, one of the main results of this project is PERSONALIZED DIGITAL COURSE FOR LABOR TRAINING IN A TECHNOLOGICAL CENTER. This course generates personalized learning based on the student's previous knowledge and the characteristics of the technological company in which they will carry out their internship. The course follows an innovative methodology based on microlearning, a learning characterized by the resolution of relatively small exercises (pills) that are focused on the development of technical and work skills and the reinforcement of critical thinking as a fundamental mechanism. The objective of this course is not so much to provide new knowledge as to develop skills that allow the students to face problems or tasks unknown to them until then: self-training skills, assess their own way of reasoning, set objectives, raise relevant questions, state hypothesis, search for information, intellectual integrity, oral and written communication, work in multidisciplinary teams. Along with this course, within the framework of this project, the result ON YOUR SIDE is being developed, a digital educational software available for mobile devices, which will accompany the student throughout the mobility process, providing useful information such as specific training resources focused on the company where they will carry out their mobility, linguistic resources, collaborative work tools, as well as social integration resources in the destination country, among others. From this App, students will be able to access the aforementioned course. In this paper we present how, through microlearning methodology and critical thinking, students can solve the content pills through their autonomy and self-discovery.This work has been funded by the Erasmus + program within the 2019-1-ES01-KA202-064569 project, Spanish Service for the Internationalization of Education (SEPIE

VET students into technology companies: a microlearning digital course to train critical thinking skills

This microlearning course is designed to support VET graduates or students, especially those with fewer opportunities, who join a technology company at the beginning of their professional career. It has been developed within the framework of the Erasmus + project “VET STUDENTS İNTO TECHNOLOGY COMPANİES: A VET students mobility network in the technological sector through a virtual environment with specific materials for critical thinking”. This is an intiative co-financed by the Erasmus + Programme, with a personalized digital course format, to take into account both the previous training of the VET student or graduate and the type of company they will join. The course has in its sights to develop in the VET student the specific competences required by the technology company to address the problems typical of fields of leading technology innovation, as well as fitting in multidisciplinary teams. To do this, this course generates an innovative methodology in which the education itinerary is built based on previous knowledge of the student and the needs and work field of the technology company. Besides its contents strengthen critical thinking as an essential mechanism for work in both dynamic and technology sectors. For that purpose, the student is asked a series of questions in the form of problems that, in addition to being related to the study plans of VET studies, require for their solution the search for information, its analysis and many times the making of a decision or adopting a personal position on it. We aim with our training projects, within the Erasmus + program, to convince students that they are capable of going further and further in the development of their professional skills being the technology sector an acceptable option for them, making their work increasingly valuable for their inclusion, for their own personal development, for that of the company in which they work and for society. But for this certain skills are required, and one of the most important is learning to learn autonomously and to accurately analyse the information received and the decisions that are made from it. It is generally true that the problems that one encounters in professional practice are not going to be the ones that you were taught in your VET studies. Vocational training has to head for equipping students with the necessary tools to face the new problems that they will face in their job and to grow professionally every day. We intend to show how valuable critical thinking skills are in analysing our way of thinking and making decisions. In this paper we present examples of the exercises included in the course, how their approach and the processes that have led to a solution relate with the standards of critical thinking and the different levels of help that are offered to the student for their solution. The course is accessible from a digital educational software “ON YOUR SIDE: VIRTUAL ASSISTANT FOR EUROPEAN MOBILITIES IN TECHNOLOGICAL CENTERS” developed in the framework of this Erasmus+ project in order to develop cooperative work between students with fewer opportunities doing their internships in technology companies and their inclusion in new job posts. We will also present this software in a very summarized way in this article.This work has been funded by the Erasmus + program within the 2019-1-ES01-KA202-064569 project, Spanish Service for the Internationalization of Education (SEPIE